The Diary of a Chambermaid Author:Octave Mirbeau One of the most scandalous books of its era, the classic erotic novel The Diary of a Chambermaid was the inspiration for not one but two films—by Jean Renoir and by Luis Bu�uel. Penned by the infamous anarchist and art critic Octave Mirbeau, it is the shocking, titillating, and pungently satiric tale of C�lestine R., the daughter of... more » a fisherman, and her sensuous adventures and ultimate debasement in the depraved world of the French nobility. A masterwork of erotica, it has been compared to Fanny Hill and the Marquis de Sade's Justine in its unabashed depiction of human licentiousness—demonstrating, in C�lestine's own words, how "when one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay."« less