"A fan is like the thighs of a woman: it opens and closes." And so begins this lush, historical novel--a mixture of imagination and conceit, passion and suspense. In a tense courtroom during the French Revolution, a young fan-maker, renowned all over Paris for her sensual and graphic objets d'art, is on trial because of her collaboration with the Marquis de Sade. Heads will roll unless the independent fan-maker, erotically cast in the shadow of Sade, can justify her art and friendships to a court known for its rigid and prudish proprieties. . . .

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Literature & Fiction

Ducornet, Rikki

Genre Fiction

Ballantine Books

A mother’s betrayal, an unexpurgated copy of The Arabian Nights, a dazzling perfume-maker, and the scent of rose attar all serve to awaken a girl of thirteen to erotic life. In Rikki Ducornet’s new novel, Elizabeth, the daughter of a professor of history living in Cairo in the 1950s, tells how she came to be an anatomist of mummies, as she opens up to us the sensations and aromas of ancient times, and explains how the city of Cairo itself gives her power – and wisdom – and takes away from her the part of the self that is necessary for love. When her mother leaves her father to “walk” the streets of Cairo, and her father forgets himself in games of chess and war, thirteen-year-old Elizabeth ponders Schéhérazade’s words, “It is good for a girl to be with a man,” and finds comfort at the shop of Ramses Ragab, a master perfumer dedicated to resurrecting the lost fragrances of the past (the Susinum prized by Roman women; the nardinon loved by Pliny; the hekenou of the Pharaohs). Under the tutelage of the perfumer, Elizabeth reads ancient esoteric texts and learns the mysteries of fragrance. Ramses Ragab is a sensitive and brilliant man, and Elizabeth’s burst of love for him has a child’s intensity and a young woman’s passion. When her father hires a magician to bring back his wife, Elizabeth discovers just how precious she herself is – and how worthless – as a girl and soon to be beautiful woman, in this ancient land of stone, sand, and darkness.

Gazelle

United States

KNOPF

As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade, Gazelletraces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in theexotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her mother–whose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabeth–moves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth’s imagination, primed by an explicit edition of The Arabian Nights, leads her to fantasies about her father’s friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.

Anchor

A comic novel depicts a young woman's struggle to overcome her sinfulness in 19th century rural France

The Stain

Grove/Atlantic

In?"The Stain"?Rikki Ducornet tells the story of a young girl named Charlotte, branded with a furry birthmark in the shape of a dancing hare, regarded as the mark of Satan. "Sadistic nuns, scatology, butchered animals, monkish rapists, and Satan" (Kirkus), as well as the village exorcist, inhabit this bawdy tale of perversion, power, possession, and the rape of innocence. Ducornet weaves an intricate design of fantasy and reality, at once surreal, hilarious, and terrifying.

Chatto&Windus

"My sleep began in the spring of 1914. I slept through both World Wars and the tainted calm between. It was as if I had been cursed by an evil fairy, pricked by an enchanted spinning wheel; an impenetrable briar had gripped my mind."Thus begins Rikki Ducornet's brilliant lyric novel about Nicolas who, as a result of witnessing his mother's murder, falls into a decades-long coma. Awakened in a seaport town in France, he reconstructs his past through storytelling and myth, resulting in an astonishing exploration of memory and imagination.

The Fountains of Neptune

MCCLELLAND STEWART

Twelve adventurous narrations exploring the sensualness, and definition of desire from all over the world detail how lives were changed from just a glance, touch, or thought

The Word "Desire"

Henry Holt Co.

Twelve adventurous narrations exploring the sensualness and definition of desire from all over the world detail how lives were changed from just a glance, touch, or thought

The Word 'Desire'

Holt Paperbacks

Rikki Ducornet's boldest imaginative act yet-a brilliant novel about the Marquis de Sade that will forever change the way we regard one of history's most notorious men. Picture a dramatic courtroom scene: during the French Revolution a fan-maker is on trial because of a manuscript seized in her rooms and her friendship with the Marquis de Sade, the notorious author of Justine, who has already been condemned and imprisoned by the same court for his sexual transgressions. Not only has she made exquisite and sexually provocative fans for her friend, but she has also coauthored with the Marquis a book about the infamous Spanish missionary, Bishop Landa, accusing him of massacres and other hideous abuses against the native population of the New World. The men of the court are so consumed with punishing the authors of this scandalous book that they are blinded to the folly of their own accusations against the Marquis. The Fan-Maker's Inquisition is a novel about books and the reveries that enger them, about the intrinsic necessity of the sovereign imagination, and about the risks of passionate living and thinking.

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition

Henry Holt and Co.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ducornet, Rikki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ducornet, Rikki

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ducornet, Rikki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Gazelle

Gazelle

The Stain

The Stain

The Fountains of Neptune

The Fountains of Neptune

The Word "Desire"

The Word 'Desire'

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition