Isidore Isou, Isou ou La Méchanique des Femmes

Paris, Aux escaliers de Lausanne, 1949. Softcover, 14.5 x 19.5 cm, 294 pp. First edition, one of 1000 unnumbered (plus 500 numbered) copies. Cover wrapped in protective tracing paper. Cover recto corners ripped, incisions along spine, small tears on cover verso, else in fine condition.

Isou ou la Mécanique des Femmes is a novel on seduction and physical love, promoting the idea for men to have an unlimited number of partners and for women to have an unlimited number of orgasms. For this text and some other erotic books previously published, Isou was tried and imprisoned. A petition circulated and many intellectuals took his defense, among them André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara.