Gabriele D'Annunzio - Pleasure (1889; epub)

The great Italian masterpiece of sensuality and seduction, published in a new English translation - the first since the Victorian era - that puts the sex back in Pleasure.

Like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Andrea Sperelli lives his life as a work of art, seeking beauty and flouting the rules of morality and social interaction along the way. In his aristocratic circles in Rome, he is a serial seducer. But there are two women who command his special regard: the beautiful young widow Elena, and the pure, virgin-like Maria. In Andrea's pursuit of the exalted heights of extreme pleasure, he plays them against each other, spinning a sadistic web of lust and deceit.

GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO (1863–1938) was the most influential and controversial Italian author of the twentieth century and a prominent figure in European Decadent literature. Born in Pescara, Abruzzo, to a wealthy bourgeois family, he was a brilliant student who acquired a solid humanistic cultural base—Latin, Greek, ancient literature, Italian, French, German, and English. He published his first book, a collection of poems, at the age of sixteen, and over the course of his life he wrote several novels, collections of poetry, and plays.
During his long public career, D’Annunzio played a central role in many of the major historical events of his day, working not only as a writer but also as a journalist, a fighter pilot, and a politician. His nationalistic rhetoric and charismatic leadership of the Italian Regency of Carnaro helped set the stage for Mussolini’s fascism. D’Annunzio died in Gardone Riviera, at his estate on Lake Garda, having greatly influenced the literature and politics of his time.