Padeno (novel)

Padeno
Author	Mateo S. Zampa
Genre	Literary fiction
Publisher	Mensile Letterario Press Commission
Publication date	94 TT
Publication place	La Rossa

This is a page about the Silver Age novel. For the page regarding the city-province, see Padeno.

Padeno is a novel by the Rossan author Mateo S. Zampa. It was first published in 94 TT in a serial format, with monthly installments spread throughout the issues of Mensile Letterario, a literary journal. It would eventually be published in a single volume. Despite the original lukewarm reception, the novel would come to see widespread critical acclaim following the author's death in 63 TT. The passage "And yet they glimmer, these silver years, shining as jewelry, illuminating with blinding light so bright, radiating in moments more brilliantly than all of the eternal House of Miglio." served as a likely inspiration for the naming of the Rossan Silver Age.

Taking the perspective of F, an otherwise nameless man referred to only occasionally by his initial, the novel follows his personal journey from a liberated human soul in his young adulthood into a grapple with a pervasive sense of nihilism in his later years. The novel is marked by themes of urban life, industrialization and loss of meaning. Written 12 years after the Spirit Revolution and its associated reforms, the novel mirrors the political happenings of the time in the attitudes of its characters. A common interpretation sees the initial excitement over democratic and liberalizing reforms slowly fading away as people's lives still continue to be defined by the industrial, machine-like reality they find themselves in. Though nominally given the freedom to do anything they wish, the constraints of people's daily lives allows almost nothing to be done, forcing them into a routine struggle for meaning in a fast-paced but unmoving world.

Plot

TBA