Pleasure

<b>Putting the sex back in <i>Pleasure </i>here is the first new English translation since the Victorian era of the great Italian masterpiece of sensuality and seduction<br> </b> <br>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. <p/>This new translation of D'Annunzio's masterpiece the first in more than one hundred years restores what was considered too offensive to be included in the 1898 translation--some of the very scenes that are key to the novel's status as a landmark of literary decadence. <p/>For more than sixty-five years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1500 titles Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.