First published 2018
Giacomo Casanova begins life abandoned by his actress mother in eighteenth-century Venice, raised by an illiterate grandmother in a city thick with spies and political scheming. His brilliant mind and insatiable appetites drive him to seduce over one hundred women across all social classes while dodging the authorities who hunt him for reading banned books. After executing the only known escape from Venice's feared I Piombi prison, Casanova flees across Europe, charming his way into royal courts from France to Russia. He wins the favor of Catherine the Great, exchanges letters with Voltaire, and helps Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte craft Don Giovanni. Yet beneath his conquests and adventures lies a man desperate for recognition, self-destructive despite his genius. Laurence Bergreen traces Casanova's extraordinary journey from Venetian gutters to European palaces, revealing how this impulsive libertine also created France's national lottery and penned the twelve-volume Story of My Life. The biography captures both the man's erotic brilliance and the decadent world that shaped him.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, adventure, 19th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, rags-to-riches
Setting: Europe, France, Russia, Venice
Period: 18th Century
544 pages · Paperback · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: sexual-content