The Caso (case) of Guido Morselli bears some resemblance to the famous "il caso Svevo," for, like Italo Svevo, through most of his career Morselli was unknown in his lifetime and his reputation as a writer has been a matter of posthumous debate. During their lives both writers had little contact with the Italian literary establishment and lived on the fringes of the Italian cultural scene. Svevo lived in Trieste, a city of the Hapsburg Empire, while Morselli was a lover of old Austria, obsessed by love/hate feelings for neighboring Switzerland. In their cultural affinities both might be regarded as belonging more to Mitteleuropa (Central Europe) than to Italy.

Morselli's introspective, antirhetorical style and his secluded, solitary life placed him outside the mainstream of Italian writing and contributed to his lack of success with publishers, who rejected one manuscript after another during his lifetime. He suffered greatly...