Artaud's novelised biography of the third-century Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is simultaneously his most accessible and his most extreme book. Written in 1933, at the time when Artaud was preparing to stage his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, Heliogabalus is a powerful concoction of sexual excess, self-deification and terminal violence - the divine upstart Heliogabalus ends his reign hacked to pieces by his own guards in the latrines of his imperial palace.
About the book
Artaud's novelised biography of the third-century Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is simultaneously his most accessible and his most extreme book. Written in 1933, at the time when Artaud was preparing to stage his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, Heliogabalus is a powerful concoction of sexual excess, self-deification and terminal violence - the divine upstart Heliogabalus ends his reign hacked to pieces by his own guards in the latrines of his imperial palace.