Une nuit d’orgie à Saint-Pierre, Martinique (A Night of Orgy in Saint-Pierre, Martinique) was first published in 1893 in Martinique, under the pseudonym Effe Géache, whose identity has never been uncovered. The story takes place in ‘The Paris of the West Indies’, Saint-Pierre, the capital of the island of Martinique, which has also been called ‘The Tropical Venice’ and ‘The American Sodom’. This novel depicts the love habits and customs of the city before its almost complete destruction by the eruption of Mount Pelée in 1902.

The erotic adventures of Hubert, Jules and Philippe, the accomplices of Une nuit d’orgie, according to critic Raphaël Confiant, ‘always mix debauchery with comedy, stupour with the most honest laughter’. Much of the interest of this work lies less in the plot than in the richness of its pictorial and spicy vocabulary, the French translations of the Creole bringing life and colour to the narrative. It is claimed by Confiant that the uninhibited Creole had many more specific vocabulary for sex and body parts than French, and that ‘Effe Géache’ used these to full advantage.

Une nuit d’orgie was ‘rediscovered’ and reprinted in 1961 by Book Hémisphères, a small publisher in Kervignac in Brittany, who commissioned twelve monochrome plates and a cover design from Siméon, who also produced colour versions of some of them. The monochrome plates were reproduced in a 1978 reprint by Calivran Reprints. Both 1961 and 1978 versions include a useful introduction to the novel by the noted erotica historian Pascal Pia, using one of his many pseudonyms, in this case Léger Alype.