Así nací, así moriré

At the end of the 19th century, a young and handsome 23-year-old Italian aristocrat made a startling confession to the writer Émile Zola. In a series of long letters that constitute a veritable intimate novel, he recounted his life in detail, including his sexual experiences with other men since he was seduced at age 16 by one of his father's friends. He did it with the intention of convincing the famous writer to transform him into a character in one of his novels. But his transparent sincerity meant that Zola, although fascinated, did not dare to use that story, so the manuscript ended up in the hands of a doctor, Georges Saint-Paul, who published it in a scientific treatise on "sexual perversion", censoring and altering the parts that he considered lurid. Some time later, the young Italian, by chance, found that treatise in a bookstore, discovering that not only had it not served as an inspiration for a Zola character, but it had been tried to illustrate a clinical case. By way of protest, he wrote -this time to the doctor- a new and long letter, even more daring, in which he defended her right to love and live as he wished. Based on the recently discovered original manuscript of the letter to the doctor, this edition is the first complete and uncensored version in Spanish of this extraordinary autobiography of a 19th century homosexual man. In it, the life of a privileged young man is brought to light, who frankly expresses his desires and defends his right to pleasure, offering us a surprising vision of gay life in turn-of-the-century Europe and constituting a unique testimony about the courage of a man who bares his soul in front of a society that rejects him, to claim his difference.