Octave Mirbeau

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."

The Torture Garden

"I am no saint; I have known many men, and I know, by experience, all the madness, all the vileness, of which they are capable. But a man like Monsiuer?" –– from THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID The famous anarchist and art critic Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) inspired not one but two films (from Jean Renoir and Louis Bunuel) with his often forgotten classic THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID. Telling the scandalous story of Celestine R., a fisherman's daughter with a taste for men, Mirbeau reveals that "when one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay." The Naughty French Novel Series is comprised of great poets and writers of the past who, as the French are wont to do, tried their hand at erotic fiction and in turn created classics in the genre. Series editor John Baxter, the author of WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS, will contribute an introductory essay to each book, detaiing the lives of the authors, the social mores of the times, and the publication histories of each book.

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Novel. "This hideously decadent fin-de-siecle novel by the French anarchist Mirbeau has become an underground classic... There are satirical and allegorical dimensions, but it remains irreducibly horrible" (The Sunday Times). First published in 1898, the decadent classic Oscar Wilde recommended as "revolting...a sort of grey adder" is available in a new edition from Dedalus, translated by Michael Richardson and with an introduction by Brian Stableford. The century that has passed since its first publication has done nothing to tame the book that, in Anne Billson's words, "flays civilised society down to its hypocritical bones and is le dernier cri in kinky eroticism."

Torture Garden

Bir Sinir Hastasının 21 Günü

Michel Delon

Le Jardin des supplices n'est pas seulement le catalogue de toutes les perversions dans lesquelles s'est complu l'imaginaire de 1900. L'ouvrage exprime aussi l'ambiguïté de l'attitude d'un Européen libéral, mais Européen avant tout, devant le colonialisme et ce qu'on n'appelait pas encore le Tiers Monde. Pour Mirabeau, la Chine est le lieu des plaisirs mortels et, par leur système pénal et l'invraisemblable raffinement de leur cruauté, les Chinois ne peuvent être à ses yeux que des barbares : Emmanuelle sur fond de guerre du Viêt-nam, comme l'écrit Michel Delon. Mais les Chinois vivent dans une société plus solidaire et matériellement moins asservie que la nôtre. Et surtout ils sont d'admirables artistes. Tel est le paradoxe de la Chine : un jardin de supplices mais aussi les plus belles porcelaines, les plus beaux bronzes que l'on ait jamais faits. " Voici donc les Barbares à peau jaune dont les civilisés d'Europe à peau blanche violent le sol. Nous sommes toujours les mêmes sauvages, les mêmes ennemis de la Beauté. "

Le jardin des supplices

Il giardino dei supplizi

"Torture Garden" by Octave Mirbeau. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Lidandets Lustgård

Calvaire (Empire of the Senses)

The Torture Garden (Empire of the Senses)

En el cielo

In the Sky

Octave Mirbeau. Préface de Pierre Michel

Le Journal d'une femme de chambre

Focusing on the developments which led to the imposition of a Communist-dominated government in Romania (Fall 1944-March 1945), and based on comprehensive archival information, Romania's Communist Takeover is the first analysis made from the Romanian perspective.

Abbé Jules

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Chambermaid's Diary" by Octave Mirbeau. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

A Chambermaid's Diary

Here, presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of Octave Mirbeau's darkest works: a fictionalized account of the death of the giant of French letters, -HonorE de Balzac. Among his journalistic endeavors, Mirbeau contributed a large number of short stories to the newspapers in the fin-de-siEcle period, and he honed his skill in that kind of work to near-perfection. Many of his anecdotal short stories make the customary tokenistic pretences to be "true," and there is a considerable gray area between his explicit works of fiction, and articles that represent themselves falsely as reportage. None of his other impostures of that -ambiguous kind, however, are quite as brazen or as seductively -persuasive in their deception as the triptych making up The Death of Balzac, which, seen purely as a literary exercise, is a masterpiece of sorts, in terms of the persuasiveness of its mendacious execution and the elegance of its narration. It is a gripping and affectively powerful story, artful in its very atrocity; a prime specimen of the work of an exceptional writer.

The Death of Balzac

The Diary of a Lady's-maid

Clara is a sadist and hysteric, who delights in witnessing flayings, crucifixions and numerous tortures, all done in beautifully laid out and groomed gardens, and explaining the beauty of torture to her companion—the narrator. Her hysterical orgasm and resulting exhaustionis a curious exploration of pain and pleasure and made this novel a trulyerotic BDSM masterpiece! Excerpt: "One evening some friends were gathered at the home of one of our most celebrated writers. Having dined sumptuously, they were discussing murder—apropos of what, I no longer remember probably apropos of nothing. Only men were present: moralists, poets, philosophers and doctors—thus everyone could speak freely, according to his whim, his hobby or his idiosyncrasies, without fear of suddenly seeing that expression of horror and fear which the least startling idea traces upon the horrified face of a notary. I—say notary, much as I might have said lawyer or porter, not disdainfully, of course, but in order to define the average French mind..."

Octave Mirbeau

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