Desires - Softcover

Desire is pure energy. It brings people together, joins them. anticipating it is thrilling; its fulfilment is overpowering. Control. on the other hand, is the very antithesis. While control is essential for civil life, it has also been misuded by people in power from time immemorial. Especially, in matters of sex, the struggle between desire and control has taken center stage.

When Ms. Benedicks and I conceived of this collection it was with an express desire to raise the level of erotic writing to literature. We wanted stories hot and stimulating but we also wanted stories with plot, character development, conflicts fraught with human contradictions.We wanted stories that craved with desire but that were also frustrated by control. We wanted tension.

Thus, we gave our clarion call and writers poured in literally from far corners of the world, taking up our challenge and rising to the occasion.

"Good sex," Lonie Barbach, author of "Pleasures: Women Write Erotica," wrote in the preface, "does not make a good story. Adrienne and I, however, felt that a good story can and does make good sex. As we read the submissions dealing with the ternal tension alluded to above, we became enlightened about another interesting aspect of erotic writing: the two distinct processes from which erotica evolves.

The western expression of erotica pits moratlity in opposition to the erotic feeling; and the eastern one believes in reincarnation and the immortality of the soul. It sees erotica as celebration of the body and life itself. There is no thought of death there.

This is not to say that Western people do not write erotica that celebrates life or easterners do not write erotica that strives to stave off death. The stories in this anthology have been inspired by either of these philosphies. The very first one is a classic example of the western approach, while many of the stories that follow are examples of the eastern joie de vivre. There is also a dialogue between the two editors at the end of the book that discusses erotica at the end of the twentieth century.

"Desires," appearing at the very dawn of the twety-first century, is really Janus-faced work: looking back at the age gone by; anticipating the future. In between, there is the eternal struggle between indomitable desire and the politics of power and control.

Read it, you will like it!

Dr. Shivaji Sengupta came to the United States thirty-one years ago, thinking he would be here for three years. Since then, he has earned a doctorate from Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature and is a Professor of English and a senior academic administrator in a small liberal arts college. He is a scholar, writer and an educator who has published two critical editions of John Dryden, the English poet of the seventeenth century.He has created AmarMira Press because he wishes to contribute to and exert an influence on the direction taken in American Literature of the twenty-first century. He is a dedicated writer of serious, literary erotic fiction. He lives in New York with his wife, Susmita, and three daughters, Pakhi, Ankhi and Mira Sengupta. . Adrienne Benedicks is the owner of the renowned erotica website, Erotica Readers Association, editor of Jane's Magazine. Her erotic book and film reviews have appeared in a number of magazines. She is re! cognized through out the world of literary erotica for having helped any number of aspiring authors to publish their works. She has also edited the e-book, Threads from the Erotic Web.