Originally published anonymously in 1725, and here presented in a fresh translation by Brian Stableford, The Temple of Gnide is Montesquieu’s illicit smash hit from the Age of Enlightenment. The author, whose works were all placed on the Index Prohibitorum by the Church, making it a sin to read them, or even to know of their existence, composed this short novel, or long prose poem, as an attempt to explore the psychological operation of the sexual impulse, and to raise the question of how the social management of that impulse might best be organized.

The Temple of Gnide is not only a symbolization of lust and its psychological and social accommodation, but a symbolization of the narrativization of the erotic, a story that is as much about story construction as it is about the substance of the story being told, and for sophisticated readers, that adds an extra dimension of depth to the narrative.