The Tutu is a genuine literary mystery: a lost masterpiece. Published in 1891, it never made it to bookshops. Its existence was only revealed in 1966, by a famous literary hoaxer. It is the ultimate decadent novel', but also outlandishly modern; it is excessive, repellent, infantile and riotously funny. Yet despite its absurdities, its eccentricities and its extravagance, in the end it somehow manages to appear compassionate, poetic, tender... even rational.'