French Erotic Fiction

A Gothic tale in the manner of the Marquis de Sade and Octave Mirbeau's Torture Garden. It was originally published anonymously in Paris in 1953. When the unnamed narrator crosses the causeway to the Chateau of Gamehuche, he enters a surrealist nightmare of debauchery and violence. The proceedings at the chateau are presided over by the master of Gamehuche, M. de Montcul, formerly the English diplomat, Sir Horatio Mountarse. With a cast of willing and not-so-willing acolytes, he serves up an over-refined cuisine of obscenity, sexual perversion and unspeakable cruelty. The book could be described as a dispatch written from the frontiers of depravity. J. Fletcher's translation is the first English version of Pieyre de Mandiargues disturbing cult classic.

People say the French stay slim thanks to their good wine and regular meals. This might prove to be the case, but the hottest erotica currently being written flows from the sexy pens of French women of letters. On the basis that writers of erotica are often known to find inspiration in their own lives and experiences, one can only draw certain conclusions! Dominique Aury under the penname Pauline Reage wrote "The Story of O" in 1954 and opened the floodgates for a whole new, sulphurous tradition of female erotica, since appropriated by female writers all over the world, including Anne Rice in the USA writing as A.N. Roquelaure. But the wonderfully perverse imagination of French authors has continued unabated ever since, and the daughters of O are now legions, including leading lights like Catherine Millet, Regine Deforges, Francoise Rey, Vanessa Duries, Florence Dugas, Alina Reyes, and the famous fashion designer Sonia Rykiel, all of whom contributed to this collection. French literary sex is hot, elegant, gently perverse, quietly shocking, and always arousing -- and these twenty-nine stories will leave no reader indifferent.

A young woman discovers the boundless potential of her sexuality in this “lyrical and graphic” international bestselling classic novel of joyful eroticism (NPR). It begins with nineteen-year-old Emmanuelle’s flight from London to join her husband in Bangkok. On the airplane, she is seduced by the passenger seated next to her. By the time they land, she has indulged her irrepressible and insatiable sexual appetite, embarking on an odyssey of hedonistic sensual discovery that takes her from the arms of her husband to intimate encounters with the wives of his business associates, to further explorations wherein the philosophical and aesthetic facets of eroticism are expounded—and enacted—to the fullest degree. Much like Anne Desclos’ The Story of O and Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus, Emmanuelle is as pertinent today as it was when it was first published in 1967, a thrilling reminder of “how this revolutionary epic had an impact on the sexual liberation of women” (Le Parisien Magazine). “Emmanuelle is not just sex; it is an eroticism that is vintage, oneiric, utopian, and tender, an optimistic and radiant eroticism.” —Le Point “Emmanuelle’s eroticism is not pathological, unlike the eroticism of revolt. It is a crucial part of the satisfaction of the individual, which feels threatened by nothing, which unfolds in harmony with the world: an eroticism of perfect accord.” —Le Magazine Littéraire “Lyrical and graphic . . . But it’s not all salacious play-by-play. The sex scenes are interspersed with abstract musings about the nature of sex. . . . In short, it arouses.” —Teddy Wayne, NPR

Alexandra has built a new life in Paris, finding the happiness she never expected with her husband Phillipe. Philippe values the comfort and intimacy of his second marriage. Hard to believe he'd risk it all. Jean-Luc is the son of Philipe's best friend. He wants Alexandra and once she is involved only one of them will get the blame. Paris Mon Amour charts the passion and the price of inescapable desire, obsessive love and devastating betrayal.

He's 39, a writer, dried up and waiting for better days. She's ten years younger, an arts graduate, not doing anything much. Both married, both bored. Lust at first sight. And so they fuck each other and keep fucking each other, just about everywhere in just about every way, and their desire increases. They explore every facility available to intensify their excitement; toys and films and vodka and cocaine, and peep-shows, exhibitionism and voyeurism. Drugged on each other, they want more. They don't talk much. But they do keep notes. Hers fill the left-hand pages of this short, shattering novel, his the right. Alternately dazed and lucid, shrewd and bewildered, they provide aprecise description ofsexual passion, its smells and tastes, fluids and stains. Of the rest of their lives, they record a few fading fragments: names of designers, novelists, singers; some stray ideas and concepts, and brief scenes from their marriages like clips from old films. Their erotic journey begins in a hotel room, and ends in a toilet cubicle. Happiness is not a love story.

A spellbinding novel celebrating Indigenous sensuality; the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French When it was first published in Quebec, The Lover, The Lake was heralded as the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French. Today, as it is translated into English for the first time, author Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau would rather call it a celebration of sensuality, another first. At a time when Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed of their land and history as well as their relationship to the body, the love explored by Wabougouni and Gabriel is an act of defiance. Their intimate connection plays out on the shores of Lake Abitibi in an affair as turbulent and unfathomable as the lake itself. "The aim here is to break free of the bonds of wounds the priests' abuse has left on our bodies and souls, wounds linked to loss--of land, of intimate spaces, of identity both as an individual and community member, of sexual identity, of delight in the body, of innocence and the uncomplicated nature of lovemaking. My hope is that this novel will serve to unearth the seed of joy buried deep in our culture, still profoundly alive . . . The Lover, the Lake shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure." -- Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau, from the prologue

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.