Black Opium by Claude Farrere
$100
Out of stock
Description
Farrere, Claude [Frederic-Charles Bargone]. Black Opium. Nicholas L. Brown. New York. 1929.
The first American translation of Farrere’s 1904 “Fumee d’Opium”, number 917 of 1250 hand-numbered limited edition copies.
8vo. Blue boards with white cloth spine. Front board lightly scraped with gilt caricature face at center. Some chipping and loses along fore edge. Top fore corner bumped. Spine soiled with title and author gilt. Book block darkened. Brown paper pastedowns with the start of separation between bookblock and binding visible in gutter with first free endpaper. Deckled pages clean though darkened. Good condition.
Written by Claude Farrere, the pen name of Frederic-Charles Bargone, “Black Opium” (“Opium Smoke” in French) collects a series of semi-autobiographical short stories about a French man exploring the delirious depths of opium addiction across East Asia and other parts of the world at the turn of the 20th century.
In addition to being a fascinating (if problematic in places) example of early modern drug literature this is, as the 1950s cover copy would say, “a smoke-hazed vision of opium dens in the Orient, cat-fights among the cream of New Orleans Creole society, and the nightmare corridors of his own private hell, soaked in the juice of the poppy…”
Apart from the tales captured in Farrere’s fictions, perhaps his most interesting story took place 3 years after this publication when French President Joseph Athanase Doumer was assassinated by Paul Gorgulof, Farrare actually wrestled the gunman to the ground and held him there until police arrived.
