 The novel is both historical (its background is events in Italy in the last decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century) and psychological, being based upon the memories of "Carlo Altoviti", the main character and first-person narrator.It is widely considered the most important novel about the Italian Risorgimento.There are analogies between W. M. Thackeray's novel "Henry Esmond" and Ippolito Nievo's "Confessions of an Italian", both in the fundamental structure of the plot, in the psychological outlines of the main characters, in frequent episodes and in the use of metaphors.