Name: Casanova's Return to Venice
ISBN: 9781908968708

Arthur Schnitzler

An ageing Casanova longs to return to Venice after a life of exile, but the desire for women proves too strong. A brilliant psychological portrait two days in the life of the most famous seducer and free spirit, by the author Sigmund Freud called his alter ego.

Casanova's Return to Venice

The greatest of all lovers comes back to his greatest love

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

In Arthur Schnitzler's poignant novella, Casanova's Return to Venice, the famed gambler, adventurer and seducer Casanova has been reduced to melancholy, unhappily civilised by age. "His yearning for Venice, the city of his birth, grew so intense that, like a wounded bird slowly circling downwards in its death flight, he began to move in ever-narrowing circles." One of Schnitzler's most poignant evocations of the passing of time and the ironies of sentiment and love, Casanova's Return to Venice tells the story of an ageing Casanova's desperate desire to return to the city he truly loves after a life of exile; a desire which is contrasted with his still-libidinous and sensuous - yet weary - pursuit of women, money and prestige. Arthur Schnitzler's Casanova's Return to Venice is translated from the German by Ilsa Barea, and published by Pushkin Press.