The Torture Garden
by Octave Mirbeau
8 1/2 x 11", 120 pp, 21 photos, $25 Last few copies, Wholesale N/A
We also offer this book in a hard-bound, limited edition, signed by publisher, V.Vale ($50)
This book was once described as the "most sickening work of art of the
nineteenth century!" Long out of print, Octave Mirbeau's macabre classic
(1899) features a corrupt Frenchman and an insatiably cruel Englishwoman
who meet and then frequent a fantastic 19th centruy Chinese garden where
torture is practiced as an art form. The fascinating, horrific narrative
slithers deep into the human spirit, uncovering murderous proclivities
and demented desires. Lavish, loving detail of description. Introduction,
biography and bibliography.
Excerpt:
Reviews:
"...sadistic spectacle as apocalyptic celebration of
human potential...A work as chilling as it is seductive."
The Daily Californian
"Here is a novel that is hot with the fever of ecstatic,
prohibited joys, as cruel as a thumbscrew and as luxuriant as an Oriental
tapestry. This exotic story of Clara and her insatiable desire for the
perverse and the forbidden has been hailed by the ciretics."
Charles Hanson Towne
"...daydreams in which sexual images are mixed nightmarishly
with images of horror."
Ed Wilson
"Mirbeau, massing his words in viscous passages, creates
a literary equivalent to the moist greasy substance of the victim's muscle,
fate and bone."
Paper