Death Sentence
10 best books like Death Sentence (Maurice Blanchot): The Opposing Shore, The Vice-Consul, Moravagine, Monsieur Teste, Eden, Eden, Eden, Under Satan's Sun, The Roots of Heaven, Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology, 1927-1984, The Deadbeats, The Bells of Basel
| Author | Julien Gracq |
| ISBN | 0002712245 |
The great maritime state of Orsenna has long been lulled by settled peace and prosperity. It is three hundred years since it was actively at war with its traditional enemy two days' sail across the water, the savage land of Farghestan - a slumbering but by no means extinct volcano. The narrator of this...
| Author | Marguerite Duras |
| ISBN | 0394750268 |
The Vice-Consul is a bleak, enigmatic novel. Set in the steamy monsoon heat of Calcutta, it brings together three suffering characters. There is Anne-Marie Stretter, beautiful wife of the French ambassador, seeking the love of younger men as if desperate for a carefree youth she never had. One of those...
| Author | Blaise Cendrars |
| ISBN | 1590170636 |
At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify...
| Author | Paul Valéry |
| ISBN | 2070279138 |
The famous opening line of Monsieur Teste -- "Stupidity is not my strong suit" -- is typical of Monsieur Teste, and of Valery as well. Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, the book is profoundly personal. Valery said he could not imagine the existence of the novel, vet he could not resist...
Eden, Eden, Eden - Pierre Guyotat's legendary novel of atrocity and multiple obscenities - finally appears in English. Published in France in 1970 (Gallimard), Eden, Eden, Eden was immediately banned and remained a proscribed text for the next 11 years. The orginal edition featured a preface by Michel...
| Author | Georges Bernanos |
| ISBN | 0803261802 |
This new translation marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Georges Bernanos's first novel, Under Satan's Sun, a powerful account of intense spiritual struggle that reflects the author's deeply-felt religion. The work develops a theme that persistently inspired Bernanos: the existence of evil...
"Well, I finally got an idea. When he fails, do like me: think about free elephant ride through Africa for hundreds and hundreds of wonderful animals that nothing could be built—either a wall or a fence of barbed wire—passing large open spaces and crush everything in its path, and destroying everything—while...
| Author | Henri Michaux |
| ISBN | 0520212290 |
Henri Michaux defies common critical definition. Critics have compared his work to such diverse artists as Kafka, Goya, Swift, Klee, and Beckett. Allen Ginsberg called Michaux “genius,” and Jorge Luis Borges wrote that Michaux’s work “is without equal in the literature of our time.”...
| Author | Ward Ruyslinck |
| ISBN | 0720622255 |
This is the story of a married couple who have lived in semi-isolation in a tumbledown shack on the outskirts of a town. Theirs has become almost an animal existence. Silvester, the husband, does not believe in love, beauty, God, or even in himself. His wife Margriet lives in constant fear of war. Whatever...
Another attempt by a left-wing apostle to prove that pre-war Europe "rushed to its doom" without so much as lifting a finger in protest. The aftermath of Armageddon, of course, is the world's glorious opportunity to embrace Russia's New Theology, guaranteed to cure or kill. - The American Mercury,...
Told in a series of first-person accounts, L'Abbé C is a startling narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed L'Abbé'. When the sexually wild...
Project for a Revolution in New York
| Author | Alain Robbe-Grillet |
| ISBN | 0394177681 |
Part prophecy and part erotic fantasy, this classic tale of otherworldly depravity features New York itself—or a foreigner's nightmare of New York—as its true protagonist. Set in the towers and tunnels of the quintessential American city, Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel turns this urban space...
| Author | Raymond Roussel |
| ISBN | 0714507342 |
Based, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition, this book invites the reader to enter a world which in its innocence and extravagance is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century.
Cantarel, a scholarly scientist, whose enormous...
Arcanum 17: With Apertures
| Author | André Breton |
| ISBN | 1931243271 |
Considered radical at the time, today Breton's ideas seem almost prescient, yet breathtaking in their passionate underlying belief in the indestructibility of life and the freedom of the human spirit. Andre Breton wrote Arcanum 17 during a trip to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec in the months after...
| Author | Colette |
| ISBN | 1843914158 |
Claudine’s House is a tender and heartfelt portrayal of childhood and memory. In an idyllic setting of countryside and woods, Colette spent her childhood surrounded by a warm and loving family. Years later, her memories and experiences inspired her to create a series of snapshots of the innocence...
Things: A Story of the Sixties; A Man Asleep
| Author | Georges Perec |
| ISBN | 1567921574 |
With the American publication of Life, a User's Manual in 1987, Georges Perec was immediately recognized in the U.S. as one of this century's most innovative writers. Now Godine is pleased to issue two of his most powerful novels in one volume: Things, in an authoritative new translation, and A Man Asleep,...
An international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Ogre is a masterful tale of innocence, perversion, and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle...
| Author | Joris-Karl Huysmans |
| ISBN | 1885586353 |
Downstream, the shortest and most autobiographical of Huysmans’ novels, is the perfect example of what the French naturalists wanted a novel to be. This dark and mordantly comic masterpiece of everyday pessimism about a Parisian clerk seeking spiritual contentment is the perfect introduction...
| Author | Jacques Derrida |
| ISBN | 0804722528 |
"My death—is it possible?"
That is the question asked, explored, and analyzed in Jacques Derrida's new book. "Is my death possible?" How is this question to be understood? How and by whom can it be asked, can it be quoted, can it be an appropriate question, and can it be asked in the appropriate...
