Alberto Arbasino's fiction is immersed in post-World War II Italian culture. Well known as a journalist and film, theater, and literary critic as well as a novelist, he brings to his work erudition, a mordant wit, and a remarkable verbal virtuosity. Drawing from modern and postmodern art, Arbasino is experimental in his writing though he rejects the antirational premise of much avant-garde writing. Throughout his career he has attempted the uneasy task of rendering his work both self-reflexive and connected to reality. His receptivity to the postmodern practices of assemblage, genre bending, and pastiche are exemplified by the role of the narrator in his work. Perhaps the key to Arbasino's work is the rational discourse maintained by the narrators who present his fictional world.

Arbasino was born on 22 January 1933 into a wealthy family in the provincial town of Voghera, in the northern region of Lombardy. His secondary education...