André Pieyre de Mandiargues is a writer of fiction, poetry, literary and art criticism, and drama. Although not one of the best-known contemporary writers (especially outside of France), he has always received praise from critics for his work. His fictional writing in particular has been singled out as constituting a special world unlike any other in French literature today. With its mixture of fantasy and detailed description, its baroque décor, its often dreamlike atmosphere, its cruel eroticism, and its appeal to the reader's senses, it is a very unusual realm of strange characters and unexpected events. The language used in this fiction (and, indeed, in all his work) has been praised for its elegance and its classical purity. Peter Brooks calls Mandiargues "a superbly evocative writer" (Partisan Review, Winter 1966); Jean d'Ormesson says that he is "un des rares stylistes de notre littérature contemporaine...