The Woman of Rome: A Distinguished Novel

433 pp. Jacket designed by Philip Grushkin, who studied under George Salter (most famous for his design for Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged); Grushkin designed hundreds of jackets for Random House, Knopf, and Abrams Art Books. "The Woman from Rome (Italian: La romana) is a 1947 novel by Alberto Moravia[1] about the intersecting lives of many characters, chief among them a prostitute (whose mother is also a prostitute) and an idealistic intellectual who, after an interrogation by the Fascist officers, during which he betrays his colleagues (for reasons he himself is not able to understand), becomes completely disillusioned about everything. Like many other Alberto Moravia novels and those by other authors of the time,[who?] this novel explores the themes of existentialism, morality, and alienation.[citation needed] Even though the novel is about a prostitute, an intellectual who loses his commitment and his belief in everything, and a Fascist officer, it presents compelling insights about the individual and the society, and what links them together, as well as about their respective responsibilities.[citation needed]"--Wikipedia