History of My Life: Volumes 3 and 4

by WillardR.Trask (Translator), Giacomo Chevalierde Seingalt Casanova (Author)

New
Paperback
1997
$50.39

Volumes 3 and 4 offer some of the most extraordinary episodes in Casanova's extraordinary life, including his liaison with the nun M. M., and his flight from the State Inquisitor's prison-each in its own way a feat of singular dash and daring.

Synopsis

Volumes 3 and 4 offer some of the most extraordinary episodes in Casanova's extraordinary life, including his liaison with the nun M. M., and his flight from the State Inquisitor's prison-each in its own way a feat of singular dash and daring.

$50.39

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 728
Edition: New edition
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 17 Apr 1997
ISBN 10: 0801856639
ISBN 13: 9780801856631
Book Overview: The complete memoirs of Casanova-available for the first time in paperback.

Media Reviews

Trask has written a version in an English fully contemporary yet remarkably Italian in sensibility. With admirable restraint and refinement, he has conveyed the zest and sensuous delight of the original. * National Book Award Citation *
These memoirs are compulsive reading... they are the work not only of a highly accomplished seducer but of a literary artist of the highest talents. -- J. H. Plumb * New York Times Book Review *
Trask expertly rendered this text into English in 1966, and his is the English version to read... Compulsively readable... Certainly, few books better convey the sheer, exuberant joy of being alive and young than these reminiscences. -- Michael Dirda * New York Review of Books *

Author Bio

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His parents, both actors, wanted him to become a priest, but their hopes were dashed when, at sixteen, he was expelled from seminary for immoral misconduct. Probably best-known for his reputation as a womanizer, Casanova was in turn a secretary, a soldier in the Venetian army, a preacher, an alchemist, a gambler, a violinist, a lottery director, and a spy. He translated Homer's Iliad into Italian and collaborated with Da Ponte on the libretto for Mozart's Don Giovanni. He retired in 1785 to the castle of a friend-Count Waldstein of Bohemia-in order to write his memoirs.