One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

Translated into over thirty languages, "One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed" has sold over two million copies: on publication in Italy, its readers received a 'remain chaste' warning from the Pope. Melissa P.'s autobiographical novel recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's erotic adventures. 'I want love, Diary,' she writes just before her fifteenth birthday. 'I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty.' Love may be hard to find, but sex waits at every turn, and Melissa seldom says no. Told with brutal frankness, mixing the coming-of-age novel with Gothic romance, Melissa P.'s narrative is a frustrated search for love in a pornographic world: it is "The Story of O" for our times.