Sunday, April 20, 2008

Pornocracy (novel)

As I wrote in my introductory post, Catherine Breillat has - in addition to being an acclaimed filmmaker - written many best-selling novels in France... and now in 2008, one of them is finally being translated and released in the United States. Pornocracy (or Pornocratie in its native language), which her film Anatomy of Hell was largely based on, is being released in June (though MIT press seems to have it early) from Semiotext(e) publishing, with a new introduction by Chris Kraus and afterword by Peter Sotos. ISBN: 1584350474

Now, Semiotext(e) claims on their website that "Pornocracy is the first of her novels to be published in English," but strictly speaking, her first book published here was actually her debut novel A Man for the Asking (also known as L'Homme facile or The Easy Man). Originally published in 1968, it was apparently rather scandalous (no surprise, considering the young author) and the translated version arrived stateside in 1969. It's long out of print, but devoted fans shouldn't have too hard a time finding a copy.

2 comments:

The Smart Tart said...

While it may not be impossible to get your hands on a copy of her first translated work, but I'd imagine paying nearly $400 (see
Amazon seller's market) is as much of an obstacle as the scarcity.

Werner von Wallenrod said...

Sure, if your book searching begins and ends at Amazon. How about a copy for $35 (see ABE Books or Alibris?
=)