When Alberto Moravia’s work first emerged, its portrayal of middle-class life as uninspiring, dreary, and deceitful both shocked and intrigued Italian readers. Moravia, himself a product of a bourgeois background, laid bare his disenchantment with this existence. However, his critique transcended mere personal discontent; it foresaw the existential belief that individuals had become so self-involved they could no longer connect with a world beyond their immediate selves. In Moravia’s narratives, his characters exist as strangers, much like those depicted by Albert Camus, and, akin to Jean-Paul Sartre’s protagonists, they remain trapped within their isolated realities without a means of escape.

Moravia’s exploration provided a profound and early examination of what would later be recognized as the modern condition. Particularly noteworthy in the context of Italian literature, Moravia accomplished this through the novel form. Traditionally, Italy had been celebrated as a nation of poets, boasting luminaries such as Dante, Petrarch, Ludovico Ariosto, and Torquato Tasso. By 1929, the Italian novel was still in its nascent stage, merely a century old. Moravia initially conceived his narrative as a tragedy rather than conventional prose fiction. This intention left significant traces in the final work, which was characterized by its heavy reliance on dialogue and monologue and adherence to Aristotle’s unities of time and place. The setting was limited to three houses in Rome, and the events unfolded over a concise span of forty-eight hours.

By opting for the novel over more classical forms, Moravia not only expressed his unique voice but also encouraged others to embrace this format, thereby advancing Italian fiction to a prominent position within global literature. His innovative approach in using novelistic storytelling, imbued with dramatic elements, spearheaded a transformation that inspired a new wave of Italian writers to explore the depths of human experience through this burgeoning literary genre.