Monsieur de Phocas

ALASTOR PRESS 

Jean Lorrain’s (1855-1906) majestically decadent novel, a choking stench of opium and ether, describes the depraved nobleman Monsieur de Phocas’s search for the redeeming gaze, the luster that can save him from the vortex of madness into which he is being sucked. Just as Huysmans’s Against the Current can be said to usher in decadence, Monsieur de Phocas is its final point.

“Whether it is a gemstone or a gaze that I desire, it is a kind of sea-green translucency that enchants, nay, possesses me; it is like a hunger within me. In vain I seek this luster in pupils and precious stones, but no human eye has it. Sometimes I have glimpsed it in the empty socket of a statue or under the painted eyelids of a portrait, but it has been only an illusion, the luster disappears almost before it can even be discovered.”

Title: Monsieur de Phocas
Original title: Monsieur de Phocas
Author: Jean Lorrain
Language: Swedish
Translator: Elias Wraak
Designer: Susanne Johansson
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 288
Published: September 2016

ISBN: 97891896333226

MORE INFORMATION

Alastor Press is a Swedish independent publisher with a focus on literature that moves in the dark, esoteric and artistically distinctive. The publisher is known for its careful editions of both classic and contemporary works in areas such as decadence, symbolism, horror and philosophical fiction. With an eye for the obscure and cult, Alastor Press highlights writing that challenges, seduces and lingers.