This book has developed over nearly a decade and has benefitted from the help and support of many friends and colleagues. I am grateful to all of them. I am particularly indebted to my doctoral supervisor Jennifer Burns for her expert and perceptive guidance and for the support she has provided whenever (often) doubts and issues arose during my years as a doctoral student. I should also thank my viva examiners, Mila Milani and Silvia Ross, whose comments and observations have helped to sharpen the analysis in this book. Charles Burdett, Director of the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of London, has been an invaluable mentor. Without his critical insights and outstanding inspirational skills, my thesis would probably not have made it into book form. The entire team at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies have been incredibly helpful and supportive. I am extremely grateful to Jane Lewin and Anne Simon for guiding me through the publication process with great professionalism and for their essential copyediting and proofreading work on the text. Sincere thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers of the ILCS.
Furthermore, I also wish to express my gratitude to the University of Warwick for generously funding my doctoral research and to the Modern Humanities Research Association, whose Research Scholarship enabled me to write a further chapter and put together my application for the series ‘imlr books’. My thanks also go to Graham for helping me to translate the quotations from the novels and for polishing my English on many an occasion.
Having lost my last grandmother this year, I would like to dedicate this book to my grandparents, loving figures of a childhood of which I shall always retain very happy memories. My grandfather Aldo, who passed away when I was still little, once told me that he regretted he would not be able to witness my school years as he thought I would do well. To this day, I am not sure I deserve the kind faith he had in me, but it makes all my efforts more worthwhile.