TORTURE GARDEN - by Octave Mirabeau [ReSearch Publications] - 1989

Octave Mirbeau was a popular writer of his day, with a wide ranging scope of interest. He wrote in many literary genres, sometimes, as in the case of this book, combining the real and the fantastical, with views on politics and human nature that were satirical, subversive to conventional morality and even anarchistic.

Torture Garden is a study of imagination without bounds, as expressed through elaborate descriptions of a fantastical "torture garden" – a grotesquely beautiful garden which contains at the its center, tortured prisoners of the state. The garden with its bounty of beautiful flowers – some real, and some fantastical – is nourished by the blood and the flesh of the torture victims. It was also designed by the designer of the garden, as a testament to the power of the state and the inventive fiendishness of the human mind to create such a living show of horror.