An adventurous, priest, musician, soldier, spy, diplomat, freemason and writer who was very often in the middle of the scandals, primarily related to women. He was unjustifiably related only by his sexual adventures and therefore a synonym for this sort of behaviour. He started to write his book at the age of 72 on the initiative of his doctor in Teplice (a spa town) in Bohemia, which was his last residence. In 2 years he wrote 12 volumes under the title ‘Historie de Ma Vie’, in this edition translated and published as ‘Memoirs’ in 5 volumes (with excellent translations by Melita Wolf). He wrote his books in excellent French although he was Italian. This is one of the biggest autobiographies of all time. Casanova describes his adventures and love affairs in these volumes. Nevertheless, this work has its historical, literal and cultural value drawing a large fresco of his time. Besides this, Casanova presents the very complex development of his political, social and philosophical beliefs which can be evaluated as very seriously even today. He studied in Padua and in the preparatory of Saint Ciprian. As a priest he drunk too much and his priesthood ended when he was caught with a lady.
He then worked for the lawyer Manzoni and in 1742 he took a doctorate at the University of Padua. In 1744 he became a secretary to Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome but a new scandal forced Casanova to leave this position and go to Naples. After this he joined the army on the island of Corfu (Greece) and he was an officer but with more interest in the uniform than the army. Therefore he left the army and secure income and travelled to Istanbul but returned to Venice shortly after. After he returned to his hometown, he joined bad company (he was only 21). He lived from playing the violin in the San Samuel Theatre in Venice, when he was down and out, although he was not a very good violinist. After he was condemned to 5 years of prison because of anti-religious behaviour and insulting public moral, he escaped from Venice prison to Paris where he became quite popular and led a very extravagant life.
Casanova never had a constant income but he was very well dressed, he liked to live in expensive houses, having coaches and servants, inviting people to luxurious dinners, spending money on women and gambling. The greatest income he gained in Paris was when he helped a group of people to organise a state lottery. In today’s measures, his profit would be counted in billions in only one and a half years. His job also had darker and secretive sides – he was a spy. Looking from today’s prospective, all his numerous adventures and actions he carried out, easiness of changing residences, staying alive and sane (a part from some venereal diseases, first of all syphilis of which he was never completely cured, still having it when he died), always pulling out some personal interest, seems nothing less than a story of the time’s James Bond or some other unnamed and mysterious world spies from the Cold War period who dressed in nice suits, drove nice cars, in trendy European locations and turned the heads of stars of the silver screen. This specific character is even more interesting to us because some of the most important of his adventures took part in our region.
Therefore it would be non-objective to give a final judgment about him because his glory (even if this is only a mystified story or pure truth) he owed to our ancestors also.

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Volume II

Volume III

Volume IV

Volume V

Franz Werfel wrote one of most beautiful biographies about Verdi and created a respectable monument to this Italian and global opera icon. The man who started from nothing and made a musical and artistic opus which became an inevitable repertoire on the world’s stages and at the same time becoming an Italian icon in the world and one of Italian symbols, died 104 years ago to this day, on 27th January 1901.
The talent of this great musician was not recognised in his youth unfortunately. Verdi became beloved with Nabucco, the one whose arias are sung on the streets and became hymns for Italian patriots and fighters for Italian union. Some years later Verdi’s name became a symbol of avant-garde political intentions of the fragmented Italy when from his pen came even more operas. A long time ago Verdi’s work crossed European borders. They were presented in New York, Buenos Aires and Aida was commissioned for the opening ceremony of the Opera House in Cairo (not for the opening of Suez Canal as was believed for a long time). At the end of his life, the large profits he gained, he donated to the Milan Casa di Riposo (later called Casa Verdi), which is a type of home for his professional brothers in their pensions – musicians. A mercy which characterised the late period of his life was also reflected in his music.
The novel was translated into Croatian by Oto Šolc.

There are thousands of books written about Napoleon and about 300 film titles dedicated to this legendary personality. His personality was controversial in its essence: at the same time hew was adored and disputed, an egocentric, a man pathologically related to power, but also a man who brought civilisation to remote parts of Europe: law, justice, equalities, brotherhood and liberty. There are not so many world famous personalities who carried within themselves so many contradictions as he did.
Dumas brings us one version of Napoleon’s life – this is a version written with a lot of sympathy probably coming from the common national feelings. His version is also a picture of an age as much as a book can be, unsettled as much as Napoleon himself, always with plenty of positive fate and tension for change.
Napoleon unified Europe for a short - but bloody period! Alexandre Dumas has built a literal monument to Napoleon which even lives today in Europe which is unifying but with less blood than two centuries ago.
Dumas’ Napoleon was quick and strong, very easy to read and there is no need for a lot of imagination to present the energy with which this man changed the destiny of Europe.

This great biographical book is actually four-books which Wagner wrote in the sunset of his life which was also the period of his greatest glory. This is the work which presents a man who is fighting with numerous problems and on the other hand is an optimistic and self-confident expression of an artist which is indirectly and directly marked not only in the history of music, but also in the whole of history and became one of the most appreciated and at the same time most disputed artists of the 19th century.
He is famous for his operatic spectacles ‘The Ring of Nibelung’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman’, but he also left some traces in the politics of his time – as an active participant of the revolutions in 1848 – and in literature, with this book ‘Mein Leben’, which was excellently translated into Croatian by Snježana Knežević and Višnja Stahuljak.
Despite all the controversies surrounding Wagner’s life and work, especially those after his death and during Hitler’s government, it is undeniable that he was a reformer of modern opera, a philosopher of a specific way of thinking and an artistic predecessor to the turbulences of the 20th century.

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Volume II

This author whose real name was Aurore Dupin was a pioneer of modern feminism, a ‘freak’ but a respected artist of her time and a kind of ‘enfant terrible’, even taking a name which is mostly associated with men. This was already enough to cause numerous controversies during her life and her liberal behaviour, which today could be interpreted as the confusion of a young woman, in her time was the inspiration of gossip columns and saloons. She considered love as a free choice and marriage as a discipline, and therefore she was a permanent emotional wanderer. She calmed down (but did not resign) at the end of her long and fruitful life. She found inspiration for her novels in her personal life which was marked by escape and plead for freedom as well as by pain and suffering as a result of her way of life. Her relationship with Chopin, emotionally very tense, but based around completely different characters was described in this autobiographical novel ‘My Life’ (translated in Croatian by Ivan Šubarić).
For the majority of critics this is one of her best works, without great pathos, but with great emotional deepness (or emptiness?) which was the result of their 8 year long relationship.
Today’s reader can feel the emotionality of a time which is far behind us and discover (or just confirm) that the permanent human preoccupation almost never changes.

This novelised Chopin biography written by Swiss writer Guy de Pourtales, very famous in his time, still represents one of the world’s best literal biographies.
This book was based on Chopin’s correspondence with his relatives, friends and contemporaries including theirs letters where they had mentioned Chopin.
Chopin was an excellent piano player in his time as well as a composer who marked late Romanticism leading it into Modernism. This book gives us a “gloves-off” view of Chopin although he was a synonym for music, it shows us his passion – music, Poland and beautiful women, then his constantly tense nerves, his obsessions and slightly bizarre demureness which he could not shake off during his life and remained an idol for generations of dandies and bohemians. The peak of his glory and at the same time his illness (maybe by a strange mixture of circumstances?) was chronologically related to his relationship with George Sand also a great artist of the time. Their relationship was a conflict of completely opposing characters in which appeared a wide spectrum of emotions – from infantile falling in love, jealousy and hate and some emotional triangles tending to a fatal ending.
This book is a story about a musician but is actually a mixture of a fabulous story about love and passion, music is its rich aural background.