The Lustful Turk and the Birth of Transgressive Fiction
In 1828, a book appeared in London that no respectable publisher would touch. The Lustful Turk, also known as Lascivious Scenes from a Harem, was printed anonymously by a man named John Benjamin Brookes. It wasn’t meant to be literature. It wasn’t even meant to be read by the public. It was meant to be passed hand to hand in secret, whispered about in drawing rooms, burned after reading. And yet, it became one of the most influential texts in the history of transgressive fiction - decades before the genre had a name.
This wasn’t just pornography. It was a weapon. A tool to break every rule Victorian society held sacred: female purity, male restraint, colonial superiority, and the illusion of moral order. The story follows Emily Barlow, a young Englishwoman kidnapped and taken to an Ottoman harem. There, she’s subjected to brutal sexual violence by Ali, the so-called Lustful Turk. But here’s the twist - and the horror - the novel claims she begins to enjoy it. "Nature, too powerful nature, had become aroused," the text reads, "conveying his kisses, brutal as they were, to the inmost recesses of my heart."
That line didn’t just shock readers in 1828. It poisoned the well of sexual storytelling for over a century. It became a blueprint for how rape was portrayed in fiction: not as trauma, but as transformation. As if the body knew better than the mind. As if pleasure could be forced into a woman’s soul and called her own.
How the Novel Weaponized Orientalism
The Lustful Turk didn’t invent the idea of the "exotic East" as a place of unchecked desire. That idea had been building since Lord Byron’s travels. But this book turned it into a fantasy of control. Ali isn’t just a villain - he’s a symbol. He represents everything Victorian England feared and secretly craved: a non-European man with total power over white women. He’s not just sexually dominant - he’s psychologically cruel. He pretends to be a Frenchman to gain Emily’s trust. He breaks her down slowly. He forces her to watch her maid and another Englishwoman be violated. He makes her complicit.
This wasn’t fantasy as escape. It was fantasy as punishment. The Orient wasn’t just a place of sensuality - it was a place where British women could be punished for their own supposed moral weakness. The novel implied that if a woman was vulnerable enough to be taken, she deserved what came next. And if she felt pleasure? Well, that just proved she was always asking for it.
The book’s Orientalism wasn’t accidental. It was ideological. It mirrored real colonial policies: the belief that non-Western societies were inherently depraved, and that Western women who fell into them had lost their moral compass. The harem wasn’t a real place most Britons had ever seen. It was a projection - a screen onto which fears of female sexuality, racial contamination, and imperial collapse could be projected.
The Epistolary Lie: How Letters Made Taboos Safe
The novel’s structure was its disguise. Written as a series of letters from Emily to her friend back in England, it gave readers plausible deniability. "This isn’t me writing this," the reader could tell themselves. "This is just a woman confessing her shame." The epistolary form let the book hide behind the illusion of authenticity. It made the reader feel like a confidant, not a voyeur.
This trick would be copied again and again. In the 20th century, authors like Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence used first-person narration to do the same thing. "I’m not saying this - my character is." The form allowed transgressive content to slip past censors. In 1857, when William Dugdale was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act for reprinting The Lustful Turk, the defense argued the book was merely "a record of depravity, not an encouragement of it." The court didn’t buy it. The book was banned. But it kept selling.
That’s the pattern: ban it, and it becomes more powerful. The Victorian authorities thought they could silence it. Instead, they turned it into a relic of rebellion. By the 1890s, when a new edition flooded the market, it wasn’t just pornography - it was a countercultural artifact.
From The Lustful Turk to American Psycho
No one called it "transgressive fiction" in 1828. The term didn’t exist until the 1980s. But the book had every trait of the genre: graphic violence, sexual taboos, psychological degradation, and a deliberate attack on social norms. It didn’t just show sex - it showed power. It didn’t just depict rape - it tried to justify it through the victim’s supposed arousal.
That same logic shows up in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991), where Patrick Bateman murders women and describes it with clinical detachment. It’s in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996), where pain becomes a path to self-discovery. It’s even in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993), where addiction and degradation are framed as truth-telling.
The difference? Those later books were written by men who knew they were breaking rules. They were self-aware. The author of The Lustful Turk believed the fantasy. He didn’t see himself as a provocateur. He saw himself as a realist.
Modern scholars call this "Sadian overtones." The Marquis de Sade wrote about power through sex. So did this anonymous author. But where Sade was philosophical, The Lustful Turk was visceral. It didn’t argue for freedom - it demanded submission.
Why This Book Still Matters - and Why It’s Dangerous
Today, The Lustful Turk is rarely taught in universities. When it is, it’s used as a cautionary tale. Feminist scholars like those at Risky Regencies have called the "rape-to-pleasure" trope "authorial wishful thinking with a big dose of stupid ideas that need to die a horrible death." And they’re right.
Modern psychology has destroyed the myth. Dr. Emily Maynard’s 2018 study in the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation found no evidence that victims of sexual violence develop sexual pleasure as a result of assault. Instead, the myth causes lasting harm. It makes survivors feel broken when they don’t feel pleasure. It makes judges doubt their testimony. It makes society blame the victim.
Yet the ghost of this novel still haunts popular culture. Think of how often in movies a woman "changes her mind" after being forced into sex. Think of how often in romance novels the hero "breaks down" the heroine’s resistance through sheer dominance. That’s the legacy of The Lustful Turk. Not as a masterpiece - but as a poison.
What the Book Got Right - and What It Got Horribly Wrong
Here’s the paradox: The Lustful Turk was right about one thing. Society does hide its darkest desires behind layers of morality. The Victorians preached modesty while buying these books in secret. They condemned the East while fantasizing about it. They claimed to protect women while writing stories that turned them into objects of punishment.
The novel exposed the hypocrisy. It showed that repression doesn’t kill desire - it distorts it. It turns desire into cruelty. It turns curiosity into control.
But it got everything else wrong. It didn’t challenge power - it celebrated it. It didn’t give voice to the silenced - it amplified the voice of the oppressor. It didn’t ask us to rethink our values. It told us to accept them - even when they were monstrous.
The Lasting Shadow of Colonial Erotica
Today, we still see the echoes of The Lustful Turk in how non-Western cultures are portrayed in Western media. The "dangerous Muslim man." The "exotic Asian woman." The "primitive African tribe." These aren’t just stereotypes. They’re narrative descendants of the harem fantasy.
And they’re not harmless. They shape policy. They justify war. They make people believe that certain groups are inherently violent, sexually deviant, or morally inferior. The novel didn’t just reflect its time - it helped build the mythology that still shapes our world.
Why We Should Read It - and Why We Shouldn’t Celebrate It
There’s value in studying The Lustful Turk. Not because it’s beautiful. Not because it’s clever. But because it’s a mirror. It shows us how far we’ve come - and how far we still have to go.
We don’t need to admire it. We don’t need to recommend it. But we do need to understand it. Because as long as we ignore the roots of our fantasies, we’ll keep repeating them.
Is The Lustful Turk a real book or just a myth?
Yes, it’s real. Published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and later reprinted by William Dugdale, it was legally prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in 1857. Surviving copies exist in private collections and university archives. It was not a rumor - it was a banned text that circulated widely in underground markets.
Was The Lustful Turk written by a man or a woman?
Almost certainly a man. The voice of Emily Barlow - the supposed narrator - is written in a way that reflects male fantasies, not female experience. The psychological shift from terror to pleasure is a classic male-authored trope, later criticized by feminist scholars as psychologically false and harmful. No credible evidence suggests a female author.
Why was The Lustful Turk so controversial in Victorian times?
It broke every taboo: graphic sexual violence, interracial dynamics, female sexual "arousal" during assault, and the portrayal of British women as sexually submissive to a non-European man. It also mocked the idea of female purity, which was central to Victorian identity. The book didn’t just shock - it undermined the moral foundation of the era.
Does The Lustful Turk have any literary value today?
Its literary value lies not in its prose or characters, but in its historical function. It’s a case study in how pornography can reinforce ideology. It shows how literature can be used to normalize violence under the guise of fantasy. Scholars study it to understand the roots of transgressive fiction and the persistence of rape myths in culture.
Is The Lustful Turk available to read today?
Yes, but not officially. The full text is available on Wikisource and in academic databases. It’s often included in scholarly anthologies on Victorian erotica or transgressive literature. However, due to its graphic content, most public libraries and platforms do not carry it. It’s accessible only through specialized research sources.
How did The Lustful Turk influence modern transgressive fiction?
It set the template: using extreme content to attack social norms. Later authors like D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Bret Easton Ellis borrowed its structure - taboo subject matter, first-person narration, moral ambiguity - but added psychological depth and irony. Where The Lustful Turk believed its own fantasy, modern transgressive fiction often mocks it. The novel’s legacy is in its audacity, not its morality.
