Italian · Advanced
Read Il piacere in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Child of Pleasure
Gabriele D'Annunzio · 1889
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About the book
Il piacere by Gabriele D'Annunzio was first published in 1889. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under romance. It runs to about 97,700 words.
Rome, 1887. A young aristocrat who lives only for beauty is about to lose his heart twice.
Count Andrea Sperelli is elegant, cultured and devoted to one rule: make your life a work of art. In his luxurious apartment near the Spanish Steps, among roses, rare books and precious objects, he waits for Elena Muti, the fascinating woman who loved him passionately and then suddenly left him.
To forget her, Andrea throws himself into a whirl of seductions until a duel leaves him badly wounded. During his recovery at a seaside villa he meets Maria Ferres, a gentle, musical and deeply spiritual woman. Between the sensual Elena and the pure Maria, Andrea is drawn into a game of desire and deception in which he may be the one who loses most.
Gabriele D'Annunzio's debut novel is the great masterpiece of Italian decadence. Rich in art, music and Roman splendour, The Child of Pleasure is a dazzling, sensual read.
- Author
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
- First published
- 1889
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Romance
- Length
- About 97,700 words
How it opens
L’anno moriva, assai dolcemente. Il sole di San Silvestro spandeva non so che tepor velato, mollissimo, aureo, quasi primaverile, nel ciel di Roma. Tutte le vie erano popolose come nelle domeniche di maggio. Su la Piazza Barberini, su la Piazza di Spagna una moltitudine di vetture passava in corsa traversando; e dalle due piazze il romorìo confuso e continuo, salendo alla Trinità de’ Monti, alla via Sistina, giungeva fin nelle stanze del palazzo Zuccari, attenuato.
Reading Il piacere in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Italian book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
