"Alberto Moravia was Italy's preeminent man of letters for much of the twentieth century. The author of numerous novels, stories, plays, and works of journalism and travel writing, he spent the early years of his life confined to a bed, entirely alone, with nothing but books and his imagination to carry him through a long struggle against tuberculosis of the bone. He had no friends, no social life, no years at a university to connect him to the world.

And yet he would mature into not only a great writer, but also a renowned conversationalist whose self-possession and presence were said to be extraordinary. William Weaver, the translator of Life of Moravia, who knew the writer well, points out in his introductory note that from an early age Moravia would dramatize the life around him or the life he imagined beyond the walls of his sanatorium through stories and plays.

And so it is fitting that this unusual memoir, the only autobiographical work Moravia left behind, be in the arm of an interview, a conversation with his friend the writer Alain Elkann."--BOOK JACKET.