Memoirs of a Young Rakehell

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 trove, and from its books, particularly those of de Sade and Aretino, he drew his own works of erotic fantasy.

Roger, the Young Rakehell of the title, returns to the family château to cut a swathe through the servants, peasantry, and even his own family. Listening at the doors of the doctor’s surgery and the confessional, Apollinaire paints a vivid picture of a young man’s sexual awakening, shot through with an irresistable sense of the surreal and the bizarre.

With an introduction by Andrew Stevens.