In this novel, discovered in a suitcase in 1996 but written in 1952, between "The Conformist" (1951, Patakis Editions, 2000) and "Contempt" (1954), Moravia offers us, through three diametrically opposed perspectives, the story of a friendship poisoned by political fanaticism, in Rome after the fall of fascism.

Sergio joined communism to escape from inertia and isolation. To succeed in converting his friend Maurizio, who comes from a wealthy, bourgeois family, he goes as far as to sacrifice the most precious good, love.

In this ambitious novel, which refers to "the story of some young communists and their romantic adventures in relation to political ideology" (as Moravia himself put it in a 1953 interview), the then forty-five-year-old author utilizes for the first time autobiographical and essayistic elements that impress.

"It is a world where every personal contact becomes a political act, stripped of its emotional dimension and meaning, in a way that recalls Kundera's tone in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." And as Moravia destroyed the manuscripts of works he did not complete, this book also offers us a rare opportunity to enter his fictional world in its genesis, in the creation of an exceptional allegory of love, passion, and politics."
("Publishers Weekly")

"Alberto Moravia conceived a type of careerist and nihilist, who leaves deeper marks than any ideology... Reading these lines today, in the twilight of the Berlusconi era, we shudder at his power and acumen..."
("The New York Times Book Review")