{"product_id":"diary-of-an-innocent-isbn-9781584350774","title":"Diary of an Innocent","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow in English, Duvert's shocking novel about a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in Northern Africa.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"I'd find it amusing if, in a few centuries, the only thing that our descendents condescend to retain of our artistic production, the only thing in which they'll see worlds to admire, to penetrate, the only thing that they'll show off as precious in immense museums after having flushed down the toilet all our acknowledged masterpieces, the only thing that will give them nostalgia and love for us will be our porn.\"—from\u003ci\u003e Diary of an Innocent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eExiled from the prestigious French literary circles that had adored him in the 1970s, novelist Tony Duvert's life ended in anonymity. In 2008, nineteen years after his last book was published, Duvert's lifeless body was discovered in the small village of Thoré-la-Rochette, where he had been living a life of total seclusion.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow for the first time, Duvert's most highly crafted novel is available in English. Poetic, brutally frank, and outright shocking, \u003ci\u003eDiary of an Innocent\u003c\/i\u003e recounts the risky experiences of a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in an imaginary setting that suggests North Africa. More reverie than narrative, Duvert's \u003ci\u003eDiary \u003c\/i\u003epresents a cascading series of portraits of the narrator's adolescent sexual partners and their culture, and ends with a fanciful yet rigorous construction of a reverse world in which marginal sexualities have become the norm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten with gusto and infused with a luminous bitterness, this novel is more unsettling to readers today than it was to its first audience when published in French in 1976. In his openly declared war on society, Duvert presents a worldview that offers no easy moral code and no false narrative solution of redemption. And yet no reader will remain untouched by the book's dazzling language, stinging wit, devotion to matters of the heart, and terse condemnation of today's society.\u003c\/p\u003eShock value aside, the book is intelligent to its core. Duvert's style is consummate, his devices elegant, his methods seductive; Bruce Benderson's translation is clear and stately.—\u003ci\u003eReview of Contemporary Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e—Tony Duvert (1945–2008) is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His fifth novel, \u003ci\u003eStrange Landscape\u003c\/i\u003e, won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 1973. Other books translated into English include the novels \u003ci\u003eWhen Jonathan Died\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDiary of an Innocent\u003c\/i\u003e as well as the essay \u003ci\u003eGood Sex Illustrated\u003c\/i\u003e, the last two both available from Semiotext(e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNovelist, translator, and essayist Bruce Benderson is the author of a memoir, \u003ci\u003eThe Romanian: Story of an Obsession\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of France's prestigious Prix de Flore in French translation, and \u003ci\u003ePacific Agony\u003c\/i\u003e (Semiotext(e), 2009.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNovelist, translator, and essayist Bruce Benderson is the author of a memoir, \u003ci\u003eThe Romanian: Story of an Obsession\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of France's prestigious Prix de Flore in French translation, and \u003ci\u003ePacific Agony\u003c\/i\u003e (Semiotext(e), 2009.)","brand":"Semiotext(e)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303512494309,"sku":"NP9781584350774","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781584350774.jpg?v=1767725089","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/diary-of-an-innocent-isbn-9781584350774","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}