by Leo Damrosch

ISBN: 9780300248289

Published: 2022-01-01

A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch"Fully succeeds in communicating that 'vivid presentness, ' that 'joyful eagerness' for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova--and reading about him."--Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal "A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites . . . another top-notch work from Damrosch."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment's shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy--and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love...