Pleasure

Originally published in Italian in 1889, this novel follows Andrea Sperelli, a Roman nobleman who approaches his own life as though it were an artwork. Like the hero of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, he chases beauty and disregards conventional morality and polite society. Within the aristocratic set of late nineteenth-century Rome, he is known as a relentless seducer.

Two women draw his particular attention. Elena is a young widow of great beauty, while Maria is gentle and seems almost untouched by experience. Andrea sets them against each other in his quest for the highest peaks of sensual pleasure, weaving a cruel tangle of desire and betrayal.

This English translation is the first in more than a century, and the first since the Victorian period. It restores passages that the 1898 translation left out because they were judged too scandalous, and those scenes are central to the book's place among the great works of literary decadence.