Casanova in Bohemia: A Novel
Jul 2015 · Open Road Media
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242
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About this ebook
An erotic, comedic, and compulsively readable historical novel depicting the beguiling Giacomo Casanova as he looks back on a life of love and ribald adventure
In Count Waldstein’s far-flung Bohemian castle, an aging Casanova spends his days as a librarian cataloging the count’s extensive collection of books. Or at least that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. Ever the storyteller, Casanova instead dedicates himself to his own writing, for which the young servant Laura Brock serves as an endlessly fascinated audience. He recounts to her his greatest escapades—from romances in a Venetian convent to the seduction of an entire harem to the triumphant amassing (and subsequent loss) of a fortune in Paris. Enlivened by the French Revolution and the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment, Casanova’s latest exploits prove he still possesses an intellectual vigor and insatiable curiosity. Even old age can’t keep this legendary libertine—who corresponded with Voltaire, discussed flight with Benjamin Franklin, and whose life and writings inspired artists as diverse as Mozart, Flaubert, Stendhal, and Hesse—from causing trouble.
Rich with eighteenth-century European social, political, and religious history, Casanova in Bohemia is an energetic and erotic portrait of Western literature’s most beloved lothario, whose hedonism was matched by his creativity and wit.
In Count Waldstein’s far-flung Bohemian castle, an aging Casanova spends his days as a librarian cataloging the count’s extensive collection of books. Or at least that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. Ever the storyteller, Casanova instead dedicates himself to his own writing, for which the young servant Laura Brock serves as an endlessly fascinated audience. He recounts to her his greatest escapades—from romances in a Venetian convent to the seduction of an entire harem to the triumphant amassing (and subsequent loss) of a fortune in Paris. Enlivened by the French Revolution and the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment, Casanova’s latest exploits prove he still possesses an intellectual vigor and insatiable curiosity. Even old age can’t keep this legendary libertine—who corresponded with Voltaire, discussed flight with Benjamin Franklin, and whose life and writings inspired artists as diverse as Mozart, Flaubert, Stendhal, and Hesse—from causing trouble.
Rich with eighteenth-century European social, political, and religious history, Casanova in Bohemia is an energetic and erotic portrait of Western literature’s most beloved lothario, whose hedonism was matched by his creativity and wit.
About the author
Andrei Codrescu (www.codrescu.com) is the editor of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas (www.corpse.org). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry, License to Carry a Gun (1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest, So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968–2012 (2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels The Blood Countess, Messi@, Casanova in Bohemia, and Wakefield. His other titles include Zombification: Essays from NPR; The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape; New Orleans, Mon Amour; The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution; Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey; The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess; Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments; The Poetry Lesson; and Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes).
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
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