The Voyeur     by Alberto Moravia, Translated by T Parks Original title: L’uomo che guarda Original language: Italian Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 1987 Format: Hardcover ISBN: 0374285446 List Price: $5.98 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £4.99 Published by Secker & Warburg Pub. Date: 1986 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 208 pages Not available for ordering Published by Abacus Pub. Date: 1991 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 185 pages Not available for ordering Published by Futura Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 208 pages List Price: £3.99 Not available for ordering

This is the story of a ‘man who lives through his eyes’. On the one hand it’s a wry exploration of the mechanics of a certain dimension of the erotic, with references to the French Decadent poet Mallarmé and to the cult of the Madonna; on the other (and this is probably the true business of the novel), secreted beneath the surface titillation is the domination of the (adult) son by the father.


As the novel progresses one sees that the son, although supposedly a feisty 1968-vintage rebel, is just a shadow-man — and even his shadows are stripped from him. The Voyeur is ironic and witty to the point of parody but underneath there is a clever and enlightening essay on psychology, on a phenomenon that is common but rarely commented on. The narrator’s submisiveness and his consequent loss of a sense of reality and ability to act on the world are surely as widespread as the existence of overweening authority itself.

‘Suddenly I think I understand why I hate my father. Because I see he’s stronger than I am. Yet at the same time I don’t know why he’s stronger. Probably if I knew that, I’d stop hating him.’ p75