Casanova

Description

Giacomo Casanova arrives in England in the summer of 1763 at the age of thirty-eight, seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. But the lure of company proves too hard to resist and the dazzlingly pretty face of young Marie Charpillon even harder. Casanova's pursuit of this elusive bewitcher drives him from exhilaration to despair and to attempt to reinvent himself in the roles of labourer, writer and country squire. Based on a little-known episode in Casanova's life, this is a scintillating, poignant, often comic portrait of a far more complex figure than legend suggests and of the decadent society in which he operated. Beautifully written, gripping and surprising, Casanova is a superb successor to INGENIOUS PAIN.

Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and greeted as the debut of an outstanding new writer. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It was followed by Casanova, then Oxygen, which was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, and One Morning Like A Bird. In 2011, his sixth novel, Pure, was published to great acclaim and went on to win the Costa Book of the Year Award. Andrew Miller's novels have been translated into thirty languages. Born in Bristol in 1960, he has lived in Spain, Japan, France and Ireland, and currently lives in Somerset.

A witty novel as well as a beautiful one . . . a source of wonder and delight - Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times Sparkling and lavishly detailed . . . rich without being cloying; resonant of time and place while remaining fresh and modern . . . he captures brilliantly the downfall and partial redemption of this charming isolate - The Times Full-bodied yet razor-sharp . . . his writing is as dextrous as Casanova's love-making. Lie back and enjoy it - Katie Grant, Spectator [A] glittering confection of 18th-century moeurs . . . The Hogarthian background is vividly drawn and spotlit by tiny details. - Independent on Sunday Miller paints a perfectly crafted picture of 18th-century London and its visiting predator in language as delicate as the tendrils of fog that curl off the Thames, and as forceful as the fetid odours conjured up in the background. - The Times Miller's prose is jewelled . . . What Casanova wrote with a swagger resurfaces here as an elegant, elegiac, meditation on the death of purpose - David Coward, Times Literary Supplement Exquisite . . . laced with luxurious imagery and wry humour - Stephanie Merritt, Daily Telegraph Miller is a pellucid, evocative writer: he brings alive the thick fogs over the Thames, the dreary winter countryside, the lamp-lit London streets. - Observer