A century after its first publication, this book is still capable of shocking. The opening satire is probably meaningful only to scholars of French political history, but the subsequent journey into the Far East accentuates connections between love and death, sex and depravity, fastidiousness and pleasure. And the petty, parochial corruptions of the narrator are put into context by the immersion into the Sadeian world of the Torture Garden. - The Times AUTHOR: Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) was a radical journalist who is best known today for his decadent classic, Torture Garden and his satire of Parisian society in the wake of the Dreyfus affair, The Diary of a Chambermaid. His first novel Le Calvaire was a succes de scandale followed a year later by Abbe Jules. Together with Sebastien Roch these novels form a very powerful indictment of French society as seen from an anarchist’s perspective and are Mirbeau’s revenge on society for his upbringing.