14 Best of Transgressive Lit
Explore the 14 best transgressive literature books that challenge norms and push boundaries. Discover shocking, thought-provoking reads that redefine storytelling.
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. “The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”—The New Yorker One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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Exquisite Corpse
by Poppy Z. Brite
From the acclaimed author of Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Wormwood comes the provocative and thrilling serial killer novel that #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub calls “a guidebook to hell.” To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the ambition of bringing his art to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his own art to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim. Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of New Orleans’s French Quarter, Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. With “intelligence, sweep, nerve, knowledge, and deeply unsettling erotic power” (Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk), Exquisite Corpse is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.
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American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this modern classic, the acclaimed author of The Shards explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. "A seminal book.” —The Washington Post One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. “A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing.... An important book.” —Katherine Dunn, bestselling author of Geek Love Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s latest novel, The Shards!
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Incest
by marquis de Sade
Incest is a chilling tale of sexual experimentation and philosophical exploration carried to its most logical--and devastating--extreme. Marquis de Sade’s semi-autobiographical protagonist, Monsieur de Franval, is rich, handsome, intelligent, and thoroughly immoral. When he marries a pious woman and fathers a daughter, he is determined to educate his progeny to be "free.” The ultimate proof of his daughter’s unfettered liberty? That she become his secret lover. But when the beautiful and accomplished daughter spurns an eligible young bachelor, instead declaring her intention to remain with her father, her na�ve and doting mother’s suspicions are at last aroused. Confused and distressed by her daughter’s behavior, Madame de Franval confronts her husband--with tragic results. A challenging and breathtaking masterpiece, Incest is a sober portrait of catastrophe in the midst of excess.
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Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York Times They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark. Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!