Salammbo

Salammbo (Gustave Flaubert)

Famous for its erotic, sadistic, and decadent content, Flaubert's exotic novel Salammbô is also noted for its lush descriptive quality, visual brilliance, and Oriental texturing. It is a symbolic work notorious for its atmospheric evocation of a dying civilization and imagery of sensuous and terrifying cruelty. Set in North Africa after the First Punic War in the third century b.c., Salammbôdetails a mercenary revolt against the city of Carthage led by the Libyan soldier Mâtho and suppressed by the renowned Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca. Within the historical context of the rebellion Flaubert inserts his unique fictional character, Salammbô, Barca's daughter and the object of Mâtho's passion. A work principally concerned with sacrilege, ruin, and the tragic futility of desire, Salammbô has both intrigued and repelled critics with its depiction of lust, violence and excess.

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