Friendship and fame following Finnegan

A common passion for literature led the pair to an intimacy which many believe inspired the nexus between the young Irish genius Stephen Dedalus and the genial Jewish businessman Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.

A similar age difference to Joyce and Svevo as well as many character traits support the thesis - nor are connections restricted to Joyce's most famous novel. By his own admission, Joyce memorialised Svevo's wife's name and glorious tumble of hair in the "heroine" presiding over his later, verbal extravaganza, Finnegans Wake.

It was during his extended labours on Finnegans Wake that Joyce received a plea from Svevo for help in getting notice for his most recent self-published novel. Joyce was now living in Paris and a victim of failing eyesight, exacerbated perhaps by his delight in drink, but he did not hesitate to muster every critic whom his newfound celebrity could command.

Svevo's Confessions of Zeno was lauded and its author thus able to enjoy a few years of being lionised as "the Italian Proust" before his heart gave way following a road accident - an end perhaps hastened by the addiction to smoking which he, like his eponymous protagonist, could never give up.

Stanley Price's book may add little to the tower of Babel of Joyce studies but, like Svevo's work, it is readable, amusing, measured and humane.

It is also highly informative on the effects of world war and subsequent irredentist upheavals in Trieste and its hinterland, and how two dedicated literary adventurers, one Jewish and the other an "enemy alien", managed to cope with them.

Stoddard Martin is a writer and publisher