Luca, 15 years old, returns to Rome by the sea with his parents after the summer holidays. School is starting, but his world is anything but right: a strange aversion to everything creeps over him, and he finds himself in an inner opposition to everything around him: the wealthy parents, whose care he now rejects, the classes, the friends - everything bores him, all connections are burdensome and repugnant to him. He gives away his possessions to people he is completely indifferent to, which fills him with dark joy. Two women free Luca from his longing for death: one, the nanny of his cousins, triggers his erotic awakening, while the other, a nurse who cares for him back to health after a long fever, becomes his first passionate love. Disobedience is one of Alberto Moravia's finest novels. Masterfully described.