Dimensions
178 x 112 x 16mm
MORPHINE
Paris, 1889. The main characters are a wealthy and aristocratic military officer named Count Raymond de Pontaillac, his opera singer mistress, and a young marquis and his wife, who live on a sprawling country estate. However, Pontaillac's addiction to morphine infects all of them, bringing all of them into contact with a world of sleazy pharmacists, lesbian doctors, and abortionists. The book offers an interesting sidelight on pre-World War 1 France, a period that we mainly associate with the elegant flowing patterns of art nouveau, and the writings of Charles Baudelaire (who is quoted in the book) and Marcel Proust. In fact, the rich could buy almost any pleasure they desired, no matter how corrupt, thanks to France's colonies in Vietnam and north Africa, the use of opium and its derivatives was widespread. MORPHINE was first published in Paris in 1891, though it was reprinted repeatedly in cheaper editions over the next twenty years. However it's been out of print since about 1914. There has never been an English translation, until now.
MY LADY OPIUM
"No one except opium-smokers ever will know what a nightmare is "--Claude Farrere. Farrere was only 28 when MY LADY OPIUM appeared in 1904 under the title Fumée d'Opium. A junior officer in the French navy, Farrere had been serving in the waters around France's colonies in what would become Vietnam, where he wittnessed first hand the exotic world of opium in Asia. It isn't so much a novel as a collection of 17 episodes, linked only in that all involve opium. Some are short stories with elements of fantasy, horror, or eroticism. One adds an unexpected postscript to the story of Faust and his deal with the devil. Another describes a naval battle of the 17th century won by a cowardly captain who finds courage in opium. Others claim to re-tell Japanese or Chinese legends about the origins of the drug. The final five, headed "Phantoms" and "The Nightmare", supposedly refer to the author's own experience. Above all, Farrere, like all writers about opium, dwelt on the aphrodisiac effect of the drug, which supposedly drove women to a sexual frenzy.
