Roberte Ce Soir and The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Together, these two novels comprise one of the most fascinating, obsessive, and erotic works of contemporary fiction. Both feature Octave, an elderly cleric, his striking, austere, yet sensual young wife, Roberte and their nephew, Antoine. In Roberte Ce Soir, the heroine engages in a ritual of hospitality, designed by Octave, whereby she offers herself to any guest who shows desire for her. This device becomes a circular game of realizing one's own identity through the reaction to a third person since, Klossowski asserts, the body is the envelope of the soul and its every expression is a permissible condition of spiritual progress. In The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the scholastic aspect of Roberte Ce Soir gives way to a more complex story composed of situations that throw a strange light on human behaviour. Roberte is now a socially and politically well-situated member of the official council for censorship. Dissatisfied by marital legitimacy, she discovers the world of sexual perversion and imposes on herself the duty of exploring it — the ultimate goal of her scandalous yet farcical task is the achievement of complete freedom.