This book enables students who have already developed a basic competence in Italian to broaden and improve their vocabulary and choose among words with similar meanings. It is the first book of Italian synonyms to be produced with the needs of English speakers in mind. All entries are accompanied by examples of usage and are graded to indicate their level of formality, and there are two indexes allowing users to locate words in Italian or English. This is an essential reference for intermediate and advanced students and teachers of Italian.

This is an essential reference for intermediate and advanced students of Italian as well as teachers and other professional linguists seeking access to the finer nuances of the Italian language. It will enable those who have already developed a basic competence in Italian to broaden and improve their vocabulary and choose between words with similar meanings. It was the first book of Italian synonyms to be written with the needs of English speakers in mind, and is an invaluable guide to finding the right word for a given context. All entries are accompanied by English glosses and examples of usage and are graded according to speech register, indicating the degree of formality or informality for a particular word or phrase. For ease of reference, there are two indexes allowing users to locate words in either Italian or English. The book also provides additional notes on grammar and usage where necessary.

" "The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust"] reduces the ungainly and intricately designed masterpiece to its shape, and with hardly a wasted word...The paragraphs on habit and memory are truly wonderful--wonderful as explication, as psychology, and as philosophy."--John Updike

"Almost everything Moss says seems to me right, illuminating, and new. This is the book of a mature and individual mind and sensibility, with a deep experience of moral, social, psychological, and aesthetic values which is rare among critics." --George D. Painter

"A moving and inspiring book. Moss clears away dark corners, clarifies motivations, and places the huge work within the reader's perspective. A book of great value to the scholar and the general reader." --"Publishers Weekly"

""Remembrance of Things Past" is more than a novel; it is a work in which a single person's life is transformed into a mythology, with its own pantheon of gods, its own religious rituals, and its own moral laws. A total vision, it does not rely on any system outside itself for support. It is as if Dante had set out to write the "Paradiso" and the "Inferno" utilizing only the facts of his own existence without any reference to Christianity...Other novelists describe or invent worlds. "Remembrance of Things Past" is an entire universe created and interpreted by Marcel Proust." -- from Chapter 1

"Moss lays out the sweeping claims and overarching structure of "Remembrance of Things Past"--the significance of Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way, or why there are such long party scenes--and is equally good at bringing to light all sorts of tiny, revealing details." -- from the new Foreword by Damion Searls

Howard Moss was poetry editor of the "New Yorker" for almost forty years. He also wrote more than a dozen books of poetry, plays, criticism, and a book of arch parody-microbiographies of cultural figures, "Instant Lives," illustrated by Edward Gorey.

Damion Searls is the author of "What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going" (stories) and has written for "Harper's," "Bookforum," "n+1," and "The Believer." As a translator--of authors including Marcel Proust ("On Reading")--he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.