[Time of Desecration is] unremittingly cold, cruel, claustrophobic lubriciousness.

It is Moravia's first novel for eight years. His very first—we should remember—appeared in 1925. Several novels, in the almost uninterruptedly productive career since, have made honourable places for themselves; and many in the vast crop of short stories were legitimate and skilful peelings off the pain and panic and dissociation in modern minds.

Benign convention has accepted for a long time now that Moravia's novels have been becoming increasingly pornographic; but even the last, The Two Of Us, in 1972—chiefly a dialogue between a man and his over-large, over-active penis—was still slightly humanized by comedy, a little tenderness, and some glimpses, however unsurprising, of chicanery in the Italian film world. This new book allows no such relief….

Some wider metaphor may, loyally, be sought beyond the time-honoured écrasement of the bourgeoisie, which is really a pretty...