The Story of My Life

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, Good Samaritan, spy, swashbuckler, self-made gentleman, entrepreneur, wit, poet, translator, philosopher and general bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover the Western world has known, but also a storyteller of the first order. And as he lived a life richer and stranger than most fictions, the story of his own adventures is naturally the most compelling of those he has to tell. He roamed the vast and changeable universe of 18th-century Europe, a world of dazzling brilliance and shadowy darkness in which countesses and impostors, pimps and princes, soldiers and scholars, priests and actresses, ambassadors and courtesans all crossed paths in the blind pursuit of pleasure, fortune, and knowledge. Entering this world with clamor and grace, and causing plenty of trouble, he moved with ease through that traffic of ideas and desires that kept the tavern always within reach of the salon, the throne never far from the gambling table and brothel.