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THE CONFORMIST, by Alberto Moravia (1951) | Book Club

For the series THE SEASONS OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE | Book Club, seventh out of nine lectures/converstations by Shirley Finzi Loew on how Italian writers have interpreted childhood, adolescence, love, motherhood, professional achievement and old age. Event held in Hebrew. FREE ADMISSION, subject to mandatory reservation at the bottom of this page.

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Secrecy and Silence are second nature to Marcello Clerici, the hero of The Conformist, a book which made Alberto Moravia one of the world’s most read postwar writers. Clerici is a man with everything under control – a wife who loves him, colleagues who respect him, the hidden power that comes with his secret work for the Italian political police during the Mussolini years. But then he is assigned to kill his former professor, now exiled in France, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist state, and falls in love with a strange, compelling woman; his life is torn open – and with it the corrupt heart of Fascism. Moravia equates the rise of Italian Fascism with the psychological needs of his protagonist for whom conformity becomes an obsession in a life that has included parental neglect, an oddly self-conscious desire to engage in cruel acts, and a type of male beauty which, to Clerici’s great distress, other men find attractive.

  • The nine lectures are a series. Mandatory FREE registration at the bottom of this page. For further information, please contact the Italian Cultural Institute of Haifa at 04-8536091.
  • Participants are invited to read the novel in Hebrew or in the original language before each lecture.

Shirley Finzi Loew graduated in Computer Engineering (Technion). After making a career in the computer industry, she moved to literature. She graduated in comparative literature (University of Haifa) with a thesis on Elsa Morante’s novels and has been working as translator from Italian into Hebrew since then.

Event held in Hebrew.
Refreshments from 18:15.

Monday, April 23, 2020, at 18:30
Italian Cultural Institute in Haifa, Rehov Meir Rutberg 12 – Haifa
FREE ADMISSION, subject to mandatory reservation at the bottom of this page.

  • Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura - Haifa