
INTRODUCTION
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
A restless young aristocrat, Count Andrea Sperelli, drifts through the glittering salons and sultry villas of late‑19th‑century Italy, driven by an insatiable hunger for beauty, passion, and sensation. He flaunts wealth and charm, courting women whose allure is matched only by their willingness to surrender to his intoxicating world. Yet beneath the dazzling parties and fevered romances lies a restless quest for an ideal that continually slips through his grasp.
The novel paints this decadent milieu with lush, lyrical prose, capturing both the intoxicating allure of excess and the hollow echo it leaves behind. Its vivid depictions of art, desire, and moral transgression sparked fierce debate among contemporary critics, who saw in Sperelli’s reckless indulgence a mirror for society’s own hidden cravings. Listeners are invited to experience the heady swirl of pleasure and peril that defines his early exploits, setting the stage for the inevitable reckoning that follows.
Language
en
Duration
~9 hours (558K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Chuck Greif, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2006-12-04
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1863–1938
A dazzling and controversial voice of Italian Decadence, this poet and novelist wrote with lush intensity and turned his own life into a kind of performance. His work moves between beauty, desire, patriotism, and spectacle, making him one of the most unforgettable figures in modern Italian literature.
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