Io, Casanova

Two figures prowl the corridors of a pasha’s palace in Constantinople. They are there to steal a painting by a French artist who has vanished without trace. Both go by the name of Giacomo Casanova, but only one is the young abbot seeking his fortune, who hopes to conquer the world with his erudition and refined manners. The other is a servant in disguise, whom he had casually seduced in Ancona, without realising that Anna, too, was driven by the same thirst for life and light, so much so that she went as far as to steal his identity. From that moment on, their fates become inextricably intertwined: now friends and lovers, more often enemies and rivals, equally impostors and inventive, they must join forces to unravel the enigma linking eight almost identical canvases scattered throughout Europe and a sect seeking to put Paracelsus’s teachings into practice. Amidst exorcisms and voyeurism, this is the story of two kindred spirits who never cease to lose and find one another, to help and torment one another, condemning and saving each other, against the backdrop of a libertine and esoteric 18th century, already steeped in decadent melancholy. With philological precision and dazzling imagination, Ida Amlesù investigates with insight and passion the roots of a multifaceted man, splitting him into two halves: the brilliant and seductive Giacomo and his dark alter ego, the restless shape-shifter Anna. In a crescendo of tension, from Rimini to Venice, from Paris to Lyon, amidst international intrigues, alchemist Freemasons, games of mirrors, love at first sight and plot twists, a novel brimming with ardour and tenderness, which attempts to unravel the only true human mystery: the heart.

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