A Novel Returns to the Day Georges Bataille Took the Stand for Sade
Patrice Trigano's new novel, Bataille au procès, rebuilds a single courtroom day in 1956 into a meditation on literature and transgression, according to a review in En attendant Nadeau.
On 15 December 1956, Georges Bataille was called to testify at the trial of Jean-Jacques Pauvert, the publisher prosecuted for bringing out the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. That single day in a Paris courtroom is the subject of Patrice Trigano's novel Bataille au procès, reviewed this week by En attendant Nadeau.
According to the review, Trigano does not treat the trial as mere historical backdrop. He turns the hearing into what the critic calls a chambre de résonance — a resonance chamber in which the question of Sade's publishability becomes a wider reckoning with literature's capacity to confront evil.
The source material gives no further detail on the novel's structure, length, publisher or release date, nor on how other witnesses or the verdict itself are handled. Readers who keep Bataille or Sade on their shelves, or who have followed the long afterlife of the Pauvert affair in French literary history, may want to watch for more coverage as the book circulates.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.