Bookkake: 3 books

In 1819, William Hazlitt, writer, radical journalist and philosopher, fallen upon harder times, moved into new lodgings, and fell in love with the maid, Sarah Walker. As his friends deserted him, and the establishment and the right-wing press attacked him, Hazlitt fell madly, hopelessly in...

Once described as “the most sickening work of art of the nineteenth century”, Mirbeau’s sensual and disturbing novel follows a young man’s journey to the ends of desire and depravity in a grand Chinese palace garden where torture is enjoyed, and practiced, as a form of art itself. With an introduction by novelist Tom McCarthy.

Guillaume Apollinaire – poet, writer, critic, coiner of Surrealism – wrote Memoirs of a Young Rakehell while working in L’Enfer ('Hell') – the closed, erotic library within the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He produced the first catalogue of this treasure...