MADAME BOVARY Provincial Ways By Gustave Flaubert Translated by Lydia Davis 342 pp. Viking. $27.95 Poor Emma Bovary. She will never escape the tyranny of her desires, never avoid the anguish into which her romantic conceits deliver her, never claim the oblivion she sought from what is perhaps the most excruciating slow suicide ever written. Her...
PARIS -- Some of the most interesting photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries picked up their craft by accident and the impact that their sophisticated background had on their work remains unsung to this day. Two auctions held at Drouot at the end of the 2009 season highlighted this little known facet of Western cultural history. On Nov. 9,...

THE EAST, THE WEST, AND SEX A History of Erotic Encounters By Richard Bernstein Illustrated. 325 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95 ''Harem culture.'' Is that like HBO's series ''Big Love'' except Muslim, not Mormon, and with tassels, a potted palm and no bickering? Well yes, sort of. But there are a lot more women in a harem. A lot. The seraglio of the...