Definitions for "Justine"
One of the Marquis de Sade's most famous novels, it depicts the graphic sexual encounters of a young woman, Justine. She is raped, branded, imprisoned and abused, yet still she believes that good will triumph. She is the perfect model of a masochist. Napoleon Bonaparte said: ' Justine is the most abominable book ever engendered by the most depraved imagination.' (See also Juliette and Masochism.)
Justine, published in 1957, is the first volume in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Taken together, the four novels of the quartet tell a complex story of passion and deception in the Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s. Justine serves to introduce the tale and provide some perspectives (red herrings, in many cases) on what might be happening.