Why read The Story of My Life?

Book cover of The Story of My Life

Book description

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover of the Western world, but a supreme story teller. He lived a life stranger than most fictions, and the tale of his own adventures is his most compelling story, and one…

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Europe

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Story of My Life as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

V.G. Yefimovich

Author

This memoir of the world’s most prolific lover and traveler is one of the best descriptors of life in 18th-century Europe. Similar to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, this book is an immanently readable and occasionally embarrassing experience of being exposed to a man’s most private thoughts and, in a word, confessions.

The experiences of Casanova are fascinating, if problematic, by today’s standards. The degree to which sexual relationships between men and women have stayed the same (while changing profoundly in other ways) is stunning to witness in the story, which sees Casanova jumping from mistress to mistress, falling in and…

From V.G.'s 3 favorite reads in 2023.