Story of the Eye

This new translation of Bataille's first short novel - published in France in 1928, it predates the more renowned Story of O - arrives with blurbs from Susan Sontag and Jean-Paul Sartre that may or may not convince you that this unabashed, undecorated pornography approaches a serious literary genre. The youthful narrator and his friends - Simone, Marcelle, and Sir Edmond - move from kinky but harmless sex-play (it may do for eggs what Last Tango did for butter) to the nauseating seduction-murder-mutilation of a terrified priest. Perhaps Simone's thigh games with the priest's eye (or maybe Marcelle's suicide) are what propel this tale into the realms of literature, but Indeed, we virtually never stopped having sex, and Neugroschel's totally accessible translation moves the French vernacular into American vernacular with paperback-porn panache. Daring in its time, undoubtedly, but strangely familiar now. (Kirkus Reviews)