Diary of an Innocent

Tony Duvert, Bruce Benderson, Bruce Benderson , Chris Kraus

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French

Semiotext (E)
10 September 2010

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Series: Diary of an Innocent

Now in English, Duvert's shocking novel about a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in Northern Africa.""I'd find it amusing if, in a few centuries, the only thing that our descendents condescend to retain of our artistic production, the only thing in which they'll see worlds to admire, to penetrate, the only thing that they'll show off as precious in immense museums after having flushed down the toilet all our acknowledged masterpieces, the only thing that will give them nostalgia and love for us will be our porn.""-from Diary of an Innocent

Exiled from the prestigious French literary circles that had adored him in the 1970s, novelist Tony Duvert's life ended in anonymity. In 2008, nineteen years after his last book was published, Duvert's lifeless body was discovered in the small village of Thore-la-Rochette, where he had been living a life of total seclusion.

Now for the first time, Duvert's most highly crafted novel is available in English. Poetic, brutally frank, and outright shocking, Diary of an Innocent recounts the risky experiences of a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in an imaginary setting that suggests North Africa. More reverie than narrative, Duvert's Diary presents a cascading series of portraits of the narrator's adolescent sexual partners and their culture, and ends with a fanciful yet rigorous construction of a reverse world in which marginal sexualities have become the norm.

Written with gusto and infused with a luminous bitterness, this novel is more unsettling to readers today than it was to its first audience when published in French in 1976. In his openly declared war on society, Duvert presents a worldview that offers no easy moral code and no false narrative solution of redemption. And yet no reader will remain untouched by the book's dazzling language, stinging wit, devotion to matters of the heart, and terse condemnation of today's society.

By: Tony Duvert
Introduction by: Bruce Benderson
Translated by: Bruce Benderson
Series edited by: Chris Kraus
Imprint: Semiotext (E)
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9781584350774
ISBN 10: 1584350776
Series: Diary of an Innocent
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 10 September 2010
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tony Duvert (1945--2008) is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His fifth novel, Paysage de fantaisie ( Strange Landscape), won the prestigious Prix Medicis in 1973. Other books translated into English include the novel When Jonathan Died, and the scathing critique of sex and society Good Sex Illustrated (Semiotext(e), 2007). Novelist, translator, and essayist Bruce Benderson is the author of a memoir, The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, winner of France's prestigious Prix de Flore in French translation, and Pacific Agony (Semiotext(e), 2009.)

Reviews for Diary of an Innocent

Shock value aside, the book is intelligent to its core. Duvert's style is consummate, his devices elegant, his methods seductive; Bruce Benderson's translation is clear and stately. * <i>Review of Contemporary Fiction</i> *