The world's greatest seducer - and the array of remarkable women he pursued - as you have never seen them before'His final scenes make an arresting image ... entertaining ... Judith Summers has worked hard to explore who these women really were' TLS'Summers relays all the most succulent scandals from the life of the famous womaniser' TelegraphEighteenth-century Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova, history's most famous seducer, talked his way into the beds of more than 200 women. Charming, brilliant and devastatingly attractive, the compulsive womaniser claimed to like and understand his conquests. But he could also be ruthless, cruel, selfish and dishonest.Who were these women who established Casanova's extraordinary reputation? From the two sisters with whom he had his first sexual experience to the libidinous Venetian nun who defied God in order to sleep with him, from the wealthy widow he tricked out of a fortune to the love of his life, the glamorous and daring Henriette, they all have their story to tell.
'Summers relays all the most succulent scandals from the life of the famous womaniser ... Cataloguing his liaisons with a succession of nuns, slaves, aristocrats, prostitutes, wives, virgins, cross-dressers and performers, Summers reveals a contradictory character who relished every challenge and tilted at taboos ... The cases of fraud are fun to read. They sit alongside his daring prison breaks as the actions of an adventurer and we snicker at the gullibility of his dupes' Daily Telegraph