Charles and Robert are twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine dedicated to vice and depravity; Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed “L’Abbé.” Charles tries to arrange for his mistress to sleep with the saintly brother. Despite Charles’ strong encouragement and the exhortations of his lover, Robert persistently refuses to succumb to the erotic obsessions shared by all three protagonists. As the story progresses, the suffocating atmosphere becomes increasingly permeated with illness, breakdown and eventual death.

Publisher: Boyars
Paperback: 158 pages

Essays about the value of Evil in literature, not as a negation of conventional morality but as a means of attaining experience beyond morality. The writers considered include Baudelaire, Genet, Kafka, Blake, de Sade and Proust.

Publisher: Boyars
Paperback: 208 pages

The novella My Mother, which remained unfinished but is concluded with Bataille’s posthumous notes, is about a young man’s sexual initiation and corruption by his mother. In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. The Dead Man recounts a young woman’s journey from the deathbed of a friend to orgiastic excesses in the taproom of a rural inn. Contains Bataille’s own introduction to the texts as well as an introductory essay by Yukio Mishima, who rated Bataille one of the three Western authors he most admired.

Publisher: Boyars
Paperback: 224 pages