A PERFECT HOAX by Italo Svevo

Translated by J.G. Nichols

Many years ago, I spent countless hours hiding in a university toilet. I was supposed to be preparing classes for legal studies summer school. Instead, I was laughing myself silly at Martin Amis’s The Information. Who doesn’t love a story of petty vindictiveness between writers? It’s comedy gold, if a little too close for comfort. Reading Svevo’s little book, I often wondered whether Amis had kept it on his bedside table as inspiration for Gwyn and Richard.

First published in 1929, A Perfect Hoax sets up what is probably the easiest prank you could play on a writer. Enrico Gaia, a travelling salesman, decides to trick his colleague, the failed writer Mario Samigli by claiming he has found an international publisher for the latter’s forgotten novel. Mario, who now writes fables about swallows in his spare time, is overjoyed and falls headfirst into the trap.

It’s easy to mock his pomposity in the moment, except Mario is a very likeable guy. Kind. Decent. Hopeful. Svevo knows how to play for laughs, but he’s also a keen observer of human complexity. That he salvages Mario’s dignity by the book’s end - despite a serious lapse of physical restraint - is a masterstroke.

A Perfect Hoax by Italo Svevo (Tr. J.G. Nichols)
Alma 101 Page Classics, 2019
101 pages