Two Friends

June 20, 2011
In this unfinished novella, discovered in a suitcase in 1996, Moravia (1907â1990) offers three strikingly different portraits of a friendship poisoned by political fanaticism, unfolding as three variant drafts of the same story set in Rome after the fall of Fascism. Sergio, a poor, bitter intellectual, is both drawn toward and repelled by his wealthy friend Maurizio. Consumed by rivalry and feelings of inferiority, Sergio is determined to persuade Maurizio to join the Communist Party. In turn, Maurizio seeks to undermine Sergio's moral smugness by coaxing him into strategies that are by turns brutal and humiliating, and using Sergio's besotted girlfriend as an unwitting pawn. Through Sergio and Maurizio's ideological competition, Moravia exposes the savagery and pettiness beneath their noble ideals. It is a world in which every personal encounter doubles as a political act, bleached of its emotional relevance and human meaning, its tone and existential disarray reminiscent of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. Because Moravia often burned early drafts of his finished works, this book offers a rare glimpse into his process, the evolution of schematic characters into realized beings, and the construction of a disturbing allegory about romance, passion, and politics gone terribly awry.

July 1, 2011

From the pen of one of Italy's most distinguished writers, these three novellas from the early 1950s are related but unfinished and were found in a suitcase several years after Moravia's death in 1990.

All three concern the unlikely friendship between Sergio, a committed Communist and intellectual, and Maurizio, bourgeois to his well-manicured fingertips. The narratives unfold from the uneasy prewar years in Rome to the equally precarious postwar years after the fall of Fascism. Although a great admirer of Mussolini, Maurizio is essentially apathetic and apolitical, quite the opposite of his intense friend Sergio. In Version A, Sergio writes denunciatory articles for a newspaper and has long political discussions with his girlfriend, Nella, and with Maurizio, whose relationships with women are casual and short-lived. In Version B, the most psychologically brilliant of the three, Moravia explores how far Sergio is willing to go to lure Maurizio into a commitment to the Communist cause. Maurizio admits that if Sergio will persuade his girlfriend to sleep with him, the next day he will sign up with the Party. When Sergio finally embraces this scheme, he discovers that Maurizio is playing mind games and has no intention of becoming a Communist—he just wanted to see how far Sergio would go in betraying the person he loved most. In Version C, Moravia pulls a Faulknerian maneuver and recounts the story from Sergio's point of view. This rendering of the narrative reveals more of Sergio's commitment to a cause that Nella doesn't buy into—and also gives more insight into the sexual tension among the three.

Unflinching in their emotional realism, these are fascinating works that reveal as much about the creative process as about friendship and Italian politics.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

This work from renowned Italian author Moravia is not a novel. In fact, it is not even a set of three novellas, as the back cover announces. The manuscript pages, probably written in 1951-52, were found in a suitcase after Moravia's death in 1990. The three unfinished stories, all about a single friendship, were then patched together to create a cohesive narrative. In the first part, "Version A," the two friends of the title, Sergio, a poor immigrant, and Maurizio, a bourgeois Roman, fight over a girl and then lose touch, though Sergio misses his friend dearly. In "Version B," Sergio and Maurizio fight a battle of wits. Desperate to convert his rich friend to communism, Sergio proposes a sinister trade: his girlfriend for Maurizio's party membership. In "Version C," the only first-person narrative, we hear Sergio's struggle to accept his poverty and return his girlfriend's relentless love. VERDICT Full and fascinating portraits emerge of two men--one obsessed with both overcoming and possessing his poverty and the other obsessed with maintaining appearances despite his desires. It's telling that Jean-Luc Godard adapted some of Moravia's novels into films, including Contempt, and readers who enjoyed those works will appreciate this publication.--Stephen Morrow, Columbus, OH

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