Torture Garden (Empire of the Senses)

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."