The Torture Garden: Le Jardin Des Supplices (The New Traveller's Companion Series) - Softcover

Mirbeau, Octave

3.74

2,598 ratings by Goodreads

9781596540675: The Torture Garden: Le Jardin Des Supplices (The New Traveller's Companion Series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596540672 ISBN 13: 9781596540675

Publisher: olympiapress.com, 2004

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Following the twin trails of desire and depravity to a shocking, sadistic paradise - a garden in China where torture is practiced as an art form - a dissolute Frenchman discovers the true depths of degradation beyond his prior bourgeois imaginings. Entranced by a resolute Englishwoman whose capacity for debauchery knows no bounds, he capitulates to her every whim amid an ecstatic yet tormenting incursion of visions, scents, caresses, pleasures, horrors, and fantastic atrocities. The Torture Garden is exceptional for its detailed descriptions of sexual euphoria and exquisite torture, its political critique of government corruption and bureaucracy, and its revolutionary portrait of a woman - which challenges even contemporary models of feminine authority. This is one of the most truly original works ever imagined. Beyond providing richly poetic experience, it will stimulate anyone interested in the always-contemporary problem of the limits of experience and sensation. As part of the continuing struggle against censorship and especially self-censorship, it will remain a landmark in the fight against all that would suppress the creation of a far freer world. Written in 1899, this fabulously rare novel was once described as "the most sickening work of art of the 19th century."

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Review:

"This hideously decadent fin de siecle novel has become an underground classic. There are satirical and allegorical dimensions, but it remains irreducibly horrible." Phil Baker in The Sunday Times

"First published in 1898 this decadent classic flays civilised society down to its hypocritical bones and is le dernier cri in kinky exoticism." Anne Billson in Time Out

"The Torture Garden by Mirbeau: a quite stunning investigation into the furthest extremities of physical love. Almost post-modern in style and structure, it is a genuinely intelligent, and therefore deeply unsettling, work." Philip Kane in The Independent on Sunday

About the Author:

Octave Mirbeau(1848-1917) French journalist and writer.Heavily involved in campaigning on behalf of Dreyfus he was the social conscience of France. An anarchist his novels are impassioned critiques of French society.

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