Wetlands, by Charlotte Roche, has sold over 680,000 copies and is "the only German book to top Amazon.com's global best-seller list. With her jaunty dissection of the sex life and the private grooming habits of the novel's 18-year-old narrator, Ms. Roche has turned the previously unspeakable into the national conversation in Germany." How dirty is it? "It is difficult to overstate the raunchiness of the novel, and hard to describe in a family newspaper," says the NYT, rather prissily. Well, then! We'll just have to guess. Is it about dirtsex?

"Wetlands" opens in a hospital room after an intimate shaving accident. It gives a detailed topography of Helen's hemorrhoids, continues into the subject of anal intercourse and only gains momentum from there, eventually reaching avocado pits as objects of female sexual satisfaction and — here is where the debate kicks in — just possibly female empowerment.

Oh.

[NYT]