Symbolism, realism, and some literary counterparts to Bassani's The Heron

What a strange journey Giorgio Bassani's novel The Heron (1968) turns out to be - the novel spanning a day in the life of an Italian landowner in 1947 as he goes off for a day of hunting and, after numerous stops, telephone calls, meals, drinks, pausing for a nap in a hotel owned by a former military (?) colleague and Fascist, a sex-dream, perambulations, several transactions regarding the day's hunting bounty - a large group of ducks plus the eponymous heron, the protagonist, Edgardo, returns home to his family and to his shaky marriage. No spoilers here, but the ending seems suitable and sad. One of the strengths of this novel comes from Bassani's ability to give us the back story of E. through a few light strokes and reminiscences - he stays extremely close to E's consciousness and never imposes an authorial narrative voice. We learn of the troubles in E's family (esp strained relationship w/ his cousin) and his wife (he's thinking of leaving her), we sense something tragic or catastrophic in his life during the war years - a hint that he had to live abroad during the war, and other hints that he may have had to make moral compromises to co-exist w/ the Fascist forces, guilt about his turning back on his Jewish faith in order to hold on to his property and privileges. He's a complex character and of course he will remind readers of Leopold Bloom - and plot echoes Bloom's odyssey in a way, though E covers more territory over the course of his day. The symbol of the heron, a bird shot to death though it will have no other use other than as a taxidermy project, develops in complexity over the course of the novel, as E ponders the fate of the bird killed needlessly in his day of hunting. The novel does feel a little out of date - not stylistically but in regard to many topical references obscure to most English-language readers - and doesn't have the emotional impact of Bassani's most famous novel, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, but it does show that Bassani was a great writer in the Italian-realistic tradition - another point of comparison is the monumental The Leopard, by Lampedusa, which I think Bassani championed, and I think he should be more widely read and recognized today.