Virginie Despentes Book order

Set against the backdrop of fading fame, the story explores the lives of Rebecca, a once-celebrated actress, and Oscar, a struggling author. Both characters grapple with their pasts, shaped by their experiences with addiction and the myth of the tortured artist. As they confront their personal demons, they contemplate the need for change in their lives, highlighting themes of reinvention and the pursuit of authenticity amidst the pressures of their respective careers.

Drawing from personal experience, Despentes shatters received ideas about rape and prostitution, and explodes common attitudes about sex and gender. King Kong Theory is a manifesto for a new punk feminism, reissued here in a brilliant new translation by Frank Wynne.

The final volume of Virginie Despentes' searing trilogy of urban life in a time of turmoil and uncertainty.

A pulpy, psychological tale of mismatched twins struggling to embody the role of the perfect woman.

"Vernon Subutex is still on the streets. Hanging around with alcohol-soaked Charles in the Parc de Buttes Chaumont, feverish and hallucinating, he is completely cut off from the wider world and unaware that he is the subject of a frantic search by a crowd of hunters hot on the trail of the last recordings of the famous dead musician, Alex Bleach. But just imagine that one of these hunters finally gets hold of the precious tapes. What might they contain? The answer could have shocking - almost apocalyptic - consequences."--Publisher's description

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018** WHO IS VERNON SUBUTEX? An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut, and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his sleeve. Even as he holds out his hand to beg for the first time, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook is taking the internet by storm. Vernon does not realise this, but the word is out: Vernon Subutex has in his possession the last filmed recordings of Alex Bleach, the famous musician and Vernon's benefactor, who has only just died of a drug overdose. A crowd of people from record producers to online trolls and porn stars are now on Vernon's trail. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne "Thrilling, magnificently audacious" Irish Times "Brimming with sex, violence and deviant behaviour" Sunday Times "Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read" NELL ZINK

After ending up on the streets, Gloria runs into TV star Eric, who happens to be an old flame. Gloria and Eric met while institutionalised, and spent their getting high on a noisy mix of drugs, music and counter-culture. Now 20 years later, Gloria is enamoured by youthful love resurrected. But as she soon discovers, navigating life and love isn't any easier for the middle-aged. Cutting deep to unearth the marriage of institutional violence and heterosexual relationships, Bye Bye Blondie illustrates how young women are continuously dragged down and neglected.

"Virginie Despentes's Apocalypse Baby kept me up several nights in a row--in part because it's a terrific page-turner, and in part because I was anxious to see how Despentes would sustain her narrative ride. Apocalypse Baby is more than a compelling punk, queerish spin on the noir genre. It is a choral performance that tumbles its readers into the heart of violent spectacle, with all its attendant grief, unease, and unclarity."--Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts Apocalypse Baby is a smart, fast-paced mystery about a missing adolescent girl traveling through Paris and Barcelona. She is tailed by two mismatched private investigators: the Hyena, part ruthless interrogator, part oversexed rock star, and Lucie, her plain and passive--almost to the point of invisible--sidekick. As their desperate search unfolds, they interrogate a suspicious cast of characters, and the dark heart of contemporary youth culture is exposed.

Baise-Moi is one of the most controversial French novels of recent years, a punk fantasy that takes female rage to its outer limits. Now the basis for a hit underground film which was banned in France, Baise-Moi is a searing story of two women on a rampage that is part Thelma and Louise, part Viking conquest. Manu and Nadine have had all they can take. Manu has been brutally raped, and determines it's not worth leaving anything precious lying vulnerable -- including her very self. She teams up with Nadine, a nihilist who watches pornography incessantly, and they enact their own version of les vols et les viols (rape and pillage) -- they lure men sexually, use them up, then rob and kill them. Drawing from the spiky cadences of the Sex Pistols and the murderous eroticism of Georges Bataille or Dennis Cooper, Baise-Moi is a shocking, accomplished, and truly unforgettable novel.