Among Moravia's works, Gli indifferenti is the best example of a novel written in advance of its time. The ideology to which it adheres is most commonly identified as existentialism, yet Moravia denies having written the novel under a conscious influence of existentialism. Gli indifferenti is exemplary also of those secret and dark sources of creativity that, as if by miracle, make coherent what should by reason be chaotic: just as Moravia was ignorant of the existential content of the novel, so is it likely that he was unaware of the original and effective technique of imagery in Gli indifferenti. Through images Moravia suggests, coherently and systematically, the contingency and chaos of objective reality. (p. 316)

Moravia has stated that the years following World War I were marked by a collapse of the traditional ethics upon which the established scale of values had been founded. The resultant crisis in...