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    Contempt

    Author Alberto Moravia
    Introduction by Tim Parks
    Translated by Angus Davidson
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    Paperback
    $17.95 US
    New York Review Books | NYRB Classics
    On sale Jul 31, 2004 | 272 Pages | 9781590171226
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    Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.
    Alberto Moravia, born in Rome in 1907, was one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. His novels, which include The Woman of Rome, The Conformist, Contempt, and Two Women, have been turned into films by Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard. He died in 1990. View titles by Alberto Moravia
    Rich in substance and resonant with meaning…a rare achievement.
    — The New York Times

    Moravia remains one of the twentieth century’s smoothest and most entertaining poets of paralysis, of the genial ennui generated by the triumph of materialism over humane values…his novels offer a bracing counterpoint to today’s soft-hearted and -headed fiction.
    — Boston Review

    About

    Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.

    Author

    Alberto Moravia, born in Rome in 1907, was one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. His novels, which include The Woman of Rome, The Conformist, Contempt, and Two Women, have been turned into films by Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard. He died in 1990. View titles by Alberto Moravia

    Praise

    Rich in substance and resonant with meaning…a rare achievement.
    — The New York Times

    Moravia remains one of the twentieth century’s smoothest and most entertaining poets of paralysis, of the genial ennui generated by the triumph of materialism over humane values…his novels offer a bracing counterpoint to today’s soft-hearted and -headed fiction.
    — Boston Review

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