The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Blue of Noon

Blue of Noon

Summary

Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and violence. As its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters, his internal collapse mirrors the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, this is a novel torn between identifying with history's victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth century's great nihilist works.

Reviews

  • There's a kind of exhilaration in this - and a kind of terror
    Will Self

About the author

Georges Bataille

Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more