Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia

Author	Marquis de Sade
ISBN	1604594187

The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes. The book was written while Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille and the manuscript was lost during the storming...

Author	Joris-Karl Huysmans
ISBN	0140447636

With a title translated either as Against Nature or as Against The Grain, this wildly original fin-de-siècle novel follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous...

Author	Roland Barthes
ISBN	0374521506

"No denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis," Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way...

Author	Alfred Jarry
ISBN	1878972251

With the very first word of his famous play Ubu Roi--"Shite!"--Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) threw down his challenge to literature, permanently altering its course thereafter. Jarry's equally revolutionary novels form the cornerstones of a science he named "Pataphysics," a method for the rational...

Author	Georges Perec
ISBN	1844674193

A long-suffering employee in a big corporation has summoned up the courage to ask for a raise. But as he runs through the looming encounter in his mind, his neuroses come to the surface: What is the best day to see the boss? What if he doesn’t offer you a seat when you go into his office?

The Art of...