The Salt Smugglers ─ History of the Abbe De Bucquoy

Originally published as a serial work in the 1850s, The Salt Smugglers is a biting and hilarious satire of the politics and censorship of literature; it is an unearthed pre-postmodern classic. By writing a first-person narrative text in which he himself is in search of a lost book containing the history of the Abbe de Bucquoy, Gerard de Nerval is able to evade the French censorship law forbidding fiction newspaper serials while at the same time underscoring its ludicrousness. With its innumerable quotations and tangential citations, The Salt Smugglers leads the reader into a dizzying spin, making way for all experimental and postmodern fiction since.