Pornocracy

As celebrated as it is reviled, internationally acclaimed filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s novelPornocracy viscerally enacts the dramatic confluence of mystery, desire, and shame that lies at the heart of sexuality. In Pornocracy, a beautiful woman wanders through a gay disco and engages a man, confident that he will follow her. Perversely and dispassionately, she offers her body as the ground of a ritualistic game in which, over the course of three evenings, the two will explore the numbing mechanics of sexual brutality. What follows is an exchange between a man and a woman that is both frankly sexual and deeply philosophical. Adapted and directed for film in France by Breillat as Anatomy of Hell (2004), Pornocracy leads the reader through an undulating and atmospheric exploration of the criminal and the erotic, finally climaxing in a place well beyond more familiar moral terrain. Although Breillat’s films—most recently Fat Girl (2001) and Romance (1999)—are well known to international audiences, this publication marks her literary debut in America. It will demonstrate that Breillat’s famous films are but one aspect of her strikingly original poetic and philosophical vision.

Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker and writer based in Paris. She is known not only for her films focusing on themes of sexuality, but also for her best-selling novels. Pornocracy is the first of her novels to be published in English.