About the book: 1993 / The fame of this book was dazzling - and scandalous. It was an undoubted bestseller at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries among the intelligentsia. Oscar Wilde, going to prison on false charges, took with him a novel by Pierre Louis, a worthy successor to Long, Apuleius, and Ovid. Europe could not resist the beauty of Aphrodite...