An ode to mad love awarded the Prix de Flore in 1999. Published in 1999 and awarded that
year’s Prix de Flore Nicolas Pages marks a departure from the Sadean preoccupations of
Guillaume Dustan’s first three novels it is in essence a love story. Inspired by a failed
romance with the Swiss artist-writer Nicolas Pages and collaging texts that Dustan initially
produced for a wide variety of other occasions (magazine articles short stories project notes
shopping lists and more) the “auto- bio- porno-graphic” prose of Nicolas Pages is by turns
trashy and encyclopedic corporeal and philosophical. Here Dustan inaugurates a “gay
literature” that is no longer painful or shameful but epicurean and cheerful without ever
lapsing into idealism. A vibrant plea for gay rights and a tapestried text that is more than
the sum of its many styles Nicolas Pages is a call to explore the body sexuality and writing
in all their variety it is a hymn to life humanity pleasure and desire.
