When the unnamed narrator crosses the causeway to the Chateau of Gamehuche, he enters a surrealist nightmare of debauchery and violence. The proceedings at the chateau are presided over by the master of Gamehuche, M. de Montcul, formerly the English diplomat, Sir Horatio Mountarse. With a cast of willing and not—so—willing acolytes, he serves up an over—refined cuisine of obscenity, sexual perversion and unspeakable cruelty. The book could be described as a dispatch written from the frontiers of depravity.