The Word "Desire"

A madman recalls his first erotic encounter, a priest loses sleep over a heretic, a scholar searches for the anomaly that inspired the Hindu divinities, a spinster hallucinates her own seductions, a pope suckles a wet nurse. Erotic and fiercely funny, these stories range across many centuries and cultures, from Algeria to Egypt to Italy to France, and all demonstrate time and again why Rikki Ducornet has been called "one of the most interesting American writers around" (Nation).