Italo Svevo (real name Ettore Schmitz) was born in Trieste in 1861 and was almost overlooked as a writer during his lifetime. It was only with his novel "La Coscienza di Zeno" ("Zeno's Conscience") in 1923 that he achieved his breakthrough. The modernity of the work fascinated his friend James Joyce (1882-1941), who then opened the doors to the literary Paris of the 1920s for him.