Story of the Eye (Paperback, New Ed)

This new translation of Bataille's first short novel - published in France in 1928, it predates the more renowned Story of O - arrives with blurbs from Susan Sontag and Jean-Paul Sartre that may or may not convince you that this unabashed, undecorated pornography approaches a "serious literary genre." The youthful narrator and his friends - Simone, Marcelle, and Sir Edmond - move from kinky but harmless sex-play (it may do for eggs what Last Tango did for butter) to the nauseating seduction-murder-mutilation of a terrified priest. Perhaps Simone's thigh games with the priest's eye (or maybe Marcelle's suicide) are what propel this tale into the realms of literature, but "Indeed, we virtually never stopped having sex," and Neugroschel's totally accessible translation moves the French vernacular into American vernacular with paperback-porn panache. Daring in its time, undoubtedly, but strangely familiar now. (Kirkus Reviews)

Bataille’s first novel, published under the pseudonym ‘Lord Auch’, is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille’s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.

It appears here with Susan Sontag’s superb study of pornography as art, ‘The Pornographic Imagination’, and Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Metaphor of the Eye’.

General

Imprint:	Penguin Classics
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Penguin Modern Classics
Release date:	April 2001
First published:	April 2001
Authors:	Georges Bataille
Translators:	Joachim Neugroschel
Dimensions:	197 x 128 x 9mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	127
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-14-118538-5
Languages:	English
Subtitles:	French
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction Books > Fiction > Special features > Classic fiction Promotions Books > Promotion > 50 Erotic Novels to Read Before You Die
LSN:	0-14-118538-4
Barcode:	9780141185385

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