Book Description

The first time I was drunk. The slippage was fantastic, seeing the lean of the world from the privilege of a happy state. Well, not always happy, but always intense, a state of the most incredible heightening. I was amplified, with soft edges that could be teased to go just about anywhere. This laxity, this dipensation, this letting go is why drunkenness is such a crime. It lets you do anything. I did do anything... Sex, violence, power. In an unnamed city in an unnamed time, a brutal and vicious war rages. A young woman becomes the General's mistress, observing the military campaigns he directs against the unseen enemy from hotels around the city. To him she is Kali, his goddess of destruction, his partner in death. '[Kali] is the bringer of death and the dancer of destruction. She dances on top of her consort Shiva who lies like a corpse beneath her.' 'She dances on top of his penis.' whispered the General. I continued with not a little malice. 'She dances on men's bellies and bites off their penises then slurps up their intestines. She eats their organs like spaghetti. She has sharp white teeth and a long red tongue which lolls out of her mouth and with which she licks the corpses clean.' 'Where did you see her?' The lie was easy. 'I've dreamt of her.' 'And did she speak to you?' I hesitated. He seemed to take my question as assent, for he mumbled, 'I knew it. You've got the look of knowing it ...' She is driven around the city in limousines, escorted by bodyguards, drinking to blot out what her life has become as the war - and the General's power - escalates. On the drive back to the hotel I saw something on the razor wire that had risen up around the city. For the first time I took a good long look, for the first time I saw the bodies strung up on the new fences. Scarecrows flapping a warning to say away. 'Resistors,' mumbled the driver. He had a heavy foot and he drove off fast but I saw the carrion birds coming towards us, their beaks full and their wings dipped in blood. I looked again, they were bombers. Occasionally she manages to slip past the guards and clandestinely meet her lover, a revolutionary fighting against the General. It is only the thought of her lover that keeps her going. But if he were to discover her relationship with the General, her 'benefactor', it would be the end of everything. But in the end, does she share more in common with the General than she knows? Shocking, at times violent, always confronting, Libertine is a new direction in women's erotic writing.