Blue of Noon (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Bataille, Georges

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141195541 ISBN 13: 9780141195544

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2012

Synopsis

Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and violence. As its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters, his internal collapse mirrors the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, this is a novel torn between identifying with history's victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth century's great nihilist works.

About this title

About the Author

Georges Bataille, French essayist and novelist, was born in 1897. He converted to Catholicism, then to Marxism, and was interested in psychoanalysis and mysticism. As curator of the municipal library in Orleans, he led a relatviely simple life, although he became involved, usually on the fringes, with the surrealist movement. He founded the literary review Critique in 1946, which he edited until his death in 1962, and was also a founder of the review Documents, which published many of the leading surrealist writers. His writing is a mixture of poetry and philosophy, fantasy and history. His first novel, Story of the Eye, was written under the pseudonym of Lord Auch. Bataille's other works include the novels L'Abbe C and My Mother, and the essays Eroticism and Literature and Evil.

Review

There's a kind of exhilaration in this - and a kind of terror -- Will Self

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141195541
• ISBN 13: 9780141195544
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128