Irene’s Cunt

First published anonymously in France in 1928, Le Con d’Irene, is the last ‘lost’ masterpiece of Surrealist erotica. Likes Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye (published the same year), Irene’s Cunt is an intensely poetic account, the story of a man’s torment when he becomes fixated upon the genitalia of an imaginary woman and is reduced to voyeuristically scoping ‘her’ erotic encounters. In between describing various events in brothels and other sexual adventures, Louis Aragon charts an inner monologue which is often reminiscent, in its poetic/ surreal intensity, of the work of Lautreamont, and of Artaud in its evocation of physical disgust as the dark correlative to spiritual illumination. This new edition features an exceptional and completely unexpurgated translation by Alexis Lykiard (translator of Lautreamont’s Maldoror and Apollinaire’s Les Onze Mille Verges), and includes complete annotation and an illuminating introduction.