Livre Blanc

de Jean Cocteau

Reissued for the 50th anniversary of Cocteau's death in 1963, "Le Livre Blanc," a "white paper" on homosexual love, was first published anonymously in France by Cocteau's contemporary Maurice Sachs and was at once decried as by the critics as obscene. The semi-autobiographical narrative describes a youth's love affairs with a succession of boys and men during the 1900s. The young man's self-deceptive attempts to find fulfillment, first through women and then by way of the church, are movingly conveyed; the book ends with a strong plea for male homosexuality to be accepted without censure. The book is fully illustrated and includes many woodcuts by the author.