Erotic Tales     by Alberto Moravia, Translated by T Parks Original title: La cosa ed altri racconti Original language: Italian Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 1983 Format: Paperback, 184 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.50 x 8.55 x 5.55 ISBN: 0374526516 List Price: $17.00, £12.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £12.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $17.00 Published by Secker & Warburg Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover List Price: £10.95 Not available for ordering Published by Abacus Books, Sphere Pub. Date: 1987 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback List Price: £5.99 Not available for ordering Published by Futura Pub. Date: 1987 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 185 pages Not available for ordering

Written late in his career (late in his life in fact), Moravia’s Erotic Tales seem at first to be exercises in writing that use the erotic as a peg — the exercises of an experienced master-narrator, playfully executed and highly readable. Some of the stories, though, are more serious, shooting questions into the heart of the sexual arena itself. In particular The Thing, The Belt and Sign of the Operation explore the cunningness of perversity in a way that might cause froth to appear at the mouth of those who strive to politicise sexual conduct. Here, in contrast to the nicey-nice world of sexual moralists, we see in Moravia’s vision the Sexual Beast who dwells inside freely roaming, driven to follow its obsessions, forever straining at the leash. In as much as recognising the ways in which we connect with one another allows us more liberty to decide our actions than denial ever does, this might be seen as a liberating book.

‘My hands rummaged among all those soft, vaguely perfumed scraps and, meanwhile,I reflected that rather than dressing themselves as men do, women tend to decorate themselves, and the clothes they wear don’t adhere to their bodies but wrap around them in a seductive, mysterious way, concealing what’s there, suggesting what isn’t there. ...I went on thinking, still rummaging, about the fact that women’s clothes don’t stay on their bodies like men’s do, but move, flutter, puff out, crumple, flap and so on. Or, going to the opposite extreme, they adhere too tightly, and then the female body seems imprisoned in all kinds of elastics, suspenders, girdles, bras and other such harnesses. So, either the fluttering, seductive gauziness, or the tight hermetic sheath.’ p181