Blue of Noon

This is my favourite novel by Georges Bataille, the dissident surrealist, the excrement-philosopher, one of literatures most transgressive writers. It delves deep into the psychosexual structures that produced fascism across Europe in the 30s and the impotence of his decaying characters in the face of history. Unorthodox, extreme, obscure, Bataille embraces taboo (necrophilia, incest, sadomasochism) to access repressed areas of the human subconscious. Surrealist dream sequences become nightmarish; the protagonist is lost in the chasms of pre-war London, Barcelona and Paris; sex is diseased and entwined with an impulse towards death. Blue of Noon accesses this transgressive space with wild energy. Its shattered vision of the world reveals flashes of intense poetry and beauty in the night something strangely sacred is beyond its limits.