Casanova's ""Icosameron,"" Or, the Story of Edward and Elizabeth: Who Spent Eighty-One Years in the Land of the Megamicres, Original Inhabitants of Prot

So closely is Casanova's name associated with his adventures, real and imagined, as libertine and seducer that one can forget he was first of all a writer, quite apart from his Memoirs. Here, only now appearing in English two centuries after its publication in French, is his single venture into fiction, abridged from its original five volumes. Very much an example of Age-of-Enlightenment utopian literature, it tells of the wondrous revelations of Edward and his sister-wife Elizabeth, who return to their native England in 1615 after an absence of 81 years dwelling among the Megamicres of Protocosmos in the interior of the planet. In a land where love is all and flood, famine, war and slavery unknown, the couple spawns 40 pairs of twins who, in turn, people their universe. Flying horses, mechanical music, quasi-electrical telegraphy, a language, a religion and a philosophy are components of this tale in which Casanova displays wide learning and vivid imagination as well as a modicum of narrative skills. Though not a major work of its kind, the tale is certainly worth bringing to light. (March 22)