Don Juan de la Mancha, Or, The Education of Lust

"You can only be happy with your first woman or with your last," announces Nathan's father, thus summarizing the seducer's dilemma. Nathan, too, is a seducer, albeit in a different time. An editor for a Viennese newspaper, he maintains an emancipated marriage and an equally emancipated affair, paying frequent visits to his psychotherapist. Whereas Nathan's father sought happiness in women and Nathan's mother found unhappiness in men, Nathan intends to do everything quite differently. But what is he doing differently? Nothing. More entertaining and facetious than ever, Robert Menasse paints a vivid portrait of the post-1968 generation and a society "that cannot even sell a bottle of mineral water without viewing the goods from an erotic angle."