
Svevo was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. Early life īorn in Trieste (at the time in the Austrian Empire, then in Austria-Hungary since 1867) as Aron Ettore Schmitz to a Jewish German father and an Italian mother, Svevo was one of seven children, and grew up enjoying a passion for literature from a young age, reading works of Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and the classics of French and Russian literature. He was also the cousin of the Italian academic Steno Tedeschi.

Ī close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo was considered a pioneer of the psychological novel in Italy and is best known for his modernist novel La coscienza di Zeno (1923), which became a widely appreciated classic of Italian literature. Novelist, short story writer, playwright, businessmanĪron Hector Schmitz (19 December 1861 – 13 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo ( Italian: ), was an Italian and Austro-Hungarian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer.
