Eden Eden Eden - Softcover

Guyotat, Pierre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 187159247X ISBN 13: 9781871592474

Publisher: The Tears Corporation/Creation, 1996

Synopsis

Eden, Eden, Eden - Pierre Guyotat's legendary novel of atrocity and multiple obscenities - finally appears in English.
Published in France in 1970, Eden, Eden, Eden was immediately banned and remained a proscribed text for the next 11 years. Set in a polluted and apocalyptic zone of the Algerian desert in a time of civil warfare, this delirious, lacerating novel brings scenes of brutal carnage into intimate collision with relentless acts of prostitutional sex and humiliation.

About this title

About the Author

Guyotat, Pierre (b. 1940). The most avantgarde and subversive French novelist of the later 20th c. Guyotat's works examine the violence of language, sexuality, politics, racism, and war. He is now regarded as one of the greatest of all modern French authors.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

/ Soldiers, helmets cocked down, legs spread, trampling, muscles drawn back, over new-born babes swaddled in scarlet, violet shawls : babies falling from arms of women huddled on floors of G.M.C. trucks ; driver's free hand pushing back goat thrown forward into cab ; / Ferkous pass, RIMA platoon crossing over track ; soldiers jumping out of trucks ; RIMA squad lying down on gravel, heads pressed against flint-pitted, thorn-studded tires, stripping off shirts in shadow of mudguards ; women rocking babies against breasts ; rocking movement stirring up scents sharpened with bonfire-sweat impregnating rags, hair, flesh : oil, cloves, henna, butter, indigo, black antimony - in Ferkous valley, below breakwater heaped with charred cedars, barley, wheat, bee-hives, tombstones, drinks-stand, school, gaddous, fig-trees, mechtas, stone walls oozing spattered with brains, orchards blooming, palm-trees, swollen in fire, exploding : flowers, pollen, buds, grasses, paper, rags spotted with milk, with shit, with blood, fruit-peel, feathers, lifted, shaken, tossed from flame to flame in wind pulling up fire, from earth ; slumping soldiers straightening up, sniffing tarpaulin flaps, pressing tear-stained cheeks onto burning rails, rubbing members against dusty tires ; sucking in cheeks, drooling over painted wood ; truck-squad, down in dry river bed, cutting rhododendrons, milk from stalks mixing on knife-blades with blood of youths disembowelled in onyx-quarry against central vein ; soldiers cutting back, pulling up saplings, digging out roots with studded boots ; others kicking, swinging lopsided : camel-dung, grenades, eagle-carrion ; RIMA squad clambering into trucks, falling onto women, guns at sides, hardened members spurring violet rags clasped between women's thighs ; soldier, chest crushing baby sucking at breast, parting woman's hair pushed over eyes, stroking forehead with fingers covered in powdered onyx ; orgasm spurting saliva from mouth, dowsing baby's buttered scalp ; retracted member resting softening on shawls soaking up dye ; wind shaking trucks, sand whipping against axles, sheet-metal ; / soldiers clambering into trucks : RIMA squad, leaning against tarpaulin pressed down on necks by driving rain, buttoning up ; eyes shining in darkening shadows, fingers glimmering on belt-buckles ; goats, sweat of pursuit around bonfires soaking coats, crouching down, licking rags tied around thighs of women ; silent youth wrapped in sackcloth......

Edition details

• Publisher: The Tears Corporation/Creation
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 187159247X
• ISBN 13: 9781871592474
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176