Blue of noon/georges bataille

Set against the backdrop of Europes 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 historys victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth centurys great nihilist works.