Travelling salesman Enrico Gaia decides to play a trick on the conceited ageing litterateur Mario Samigli: he dupes him into thinking that a representative of a prestigious Viennese publishing house wants to commission a German translation of a long-forgotten novel Samigli had written and published at his own expense forty years ago. This leads the old man to reach new heights of self-delusion, spurred on by Gaia s succession of ruses. In this tragicomic study of deception and disappointment, Italo Svevo who himself was an undiscovered writer until his old age parodies elements of his own life and offers an insightful psychological portrait of a person who has lost touch with reality. . . .