'Literature is not innocent', stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957
collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with th
e knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These litera
ry profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Bronte's "Wuthering
Heights", Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" and the writings of Sade, Kafka and
Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transg
ression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
