Charlotte Roche's first novel, Wetlands, has ignited controversy about whether it is feminist literature or scatological porn. (HarperCollins)

Like its 18-year-old narrator, Charlotte Roche’s novel Wetlands comes on strong. After paying tribute to both her hemorrhoids and the joys of anal sex, the novel’s heroine, Helen Memel, takes readers on a guided tour of her body electric, clinically detailing her blood, smegma, blisters, bowel movements, blackheads, ingrown hairs, homemade tampons and perhaps most shocking of all, her tears.

Roche’s debut novel, translated from its original German (Feuchtgebiete), arrived in Canada earlier this month amidst rumours of people fainting at some of Roche’s readings in Europe. How’s that for buzz? More impressively, Wetlands is the first German work of fiction to rise to the top of Amazon.com’s global bestseller list — to date, it has sold over a million copies worldwide.

"We’re a nation of prudes. Sex in Canlit usually appears in soft focus ... behind a gauze curtain. This has to do with our penchant for historical fiction that is draped in petticoats and finery: not a lot of room there for sexual shenanigans.”—Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire

Along the way, Wetlands has also ignited fierce debate about whether it is feminist literature or scatological porn. Most everyone agrees that Wetlands is something to get hot and bothered about. One German newspaper dismissed it as a “masturbation pamphlet,” the New Statesman deemed it “both gross and engrossing” and the New York Times declared, “It is difficult to overstate the raunchiness of this novel.”

Rob Firing, the director of publicity at Wetlands’ Canadian publisher, HarperCollins, admits that the book’s more provocative bits are part of what drew HarperCollins to the material in the first place. “We knew that as soon as someone read the book that there would be some reaction. Good or bad, it would be there,” he says. “The one thing that really got us going as publishers is it’s impossible not to react to this book.”

Readers might also want to keep smelling salts on hand before tackling Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, another literary translation that recently arrived on Canadian shelves awash in scandal. Set during the Second World War, the book is narrated by Maximilien Aue, a cultured Nazi officer who spends his down time having sex with tree branches, sausages and his twin sister. While some reviewers have hailed The Kindly Ones a “masterpiece” and a “tour de force,” others have called it “revolting” and “excessive,” with a San Francisco Chronicle writer concluding, “the reader ends up wanting to vomit.”

Originally written in French, The Kindly Ones has netted both the prestigious Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française and the Prix Goncourt in France. What makes The Kindly Ones such a tricky proposition is that in addition to exploding sexual taboos, it asks readers to sympathize with a narrator who is a member of the SS.

It’s difficult to predict how either The Kindly Ones or Wetlands will fare with Canadians, who are frequently stereotyped as conservative when it comes to reading or writing spicy material.

(McClelland & Stewart)

“Yes, we’re a nation of prudes,” says Steven W. Beattie, review editor at Canadian literary magazine Quill & Quire. “Sex in Canlit usually appears in soft focus, as if behind a gauze curtain. In part, this has to do with our penchant for historical fiction that is draped in petticoats and finery: not a lot of room there for sexual shenanigans.”

Toronto author Russell Smith knows first-hand that sex doesn’t necessarily sell in Canlit. In 2003, he published the pornographic novel Diana: A Diary in the Second Person, under the pseudonym Diane Savage. A Toronto reviewer denounced the book, outing Smith as Diana’s author in the process. When the book’s publisher, Gutter Press, folded shortly thereafter, Diana disappeared from circulation before much critical discussion could take place. After re-releasing the book last year under his own name, Smith found the reaction wasn’t much different. “I was on the cover of [Toronto newspaper] Eye Weekly, but as for a critical evaluation of the book itself, there was none. I don’t think I’ve read a single actual review of the book.”

Smith suspects the response (or lack thereof) stems from the fact that WASP reviewers in Canada, the U.S. and the UK are still “embarrassed by the whole idea” of a pornographic work like Diana. He cites conservative British journalist Auberon Waugh’s role in founding the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards as a prime example of this kind of embarrassment in action.

In contrast, continental European writers seem to take an open-minded view of extreme material, something Beattie attributes to an older literary tradition that exposes readers to different perspectives and attitudes. This cosmopolitan approach might explain why French authors like the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille and Anais Nin, as well as current-day provocateurs like Michel Houellebecq (The Elementary Particles, Platform) and Catherine Millet (The Sexual Life of Catherine M.), have written about sex from a highly intellectual point of view.

Smith says Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Le voyeur — which involves child sex — “hardly caused a ripple of scandal in France.” The Toronto author adds: “Honestly, if he’d published it here, he would have had charges against him.” Smith thinks this prim attitude is “a WASP thing that we’ve inherited from our colonial parent.”

Smith mentions In Bed With…, a recent collection of British erotica penned by some well-known UK authors, who all appear under pseudonyms. “Why would they be anonymous? That again, I think, is the difference between Anglo-Saxon culture and Latin culture, and continental European culture generally. You know, here’s Charlotte Roche doing something under her own name, and the Brits still can’t bring themselves to do that. I think that’s our culture, we’re more on the British side of things.”

Beattie is reluctant to chastise U.K. readers. “I was travelling in Britain shortly after the controversy over Bret Easton Ellis's [1991] novel American Psycho erupted here in Canada, and I was startled by how they embraced that novel across the pond. They were willing to look at its literary merits (its excoriating satire, for instance), whereas we got caught up by the content.”

The content in Wetlands, for all the hoopla, has very little to do with sex. The entire novel takes place in a Hamburg hospital, where Helen is recovering from an unfortunate infection in her nether regions. Surgery and bed rest pave the way for Helen’s many stream-of-consciousness ruminations on her own body.

Smith says Roche’s book has less to do with arousal and more closely resembles Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca, a recent installation that aims to bring the nauseating inner workings of the human digestive system out in the open. Beattie argues that the book’s descriptions are “more exploratory than titillating.” In interviews, Roche herself has supported these interpretations, suggesting the book is more of a manifesto, something she dreamt up in the feminine-hygiene product aisle and originally planned to write as a non-fiction, embrace-yourself manual for women.

(HarperCollins)

The resulting novel is a compulsive read, voiced by a brazen narrator who is unapologetic about her desire for sex, her glee at rubbing herself on filthy public toilet seats and her very unusual uses for avocado pits. Helen Memel might be weird, but she’s also extremely funny, particularly when she delivers this precocious smackdown to “well-kept” women everywhere: “Everything is clean and carefully styled. Every little body part has been treated with some beauty product. What these women don’t know: the more effort they put into these little details, the more uptight they seem.”

Like Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which became a phenomenon for its frank depictions of sexuality way back in 1973, Wetlands ultimately straddles the coarse, provocative language of porn with the themes and narrative drive of literature. In the process, the book fulfills a prediction Smith made in the introduction to his recent reissue of Diana: “The line between the genres will continue to erode… literature will become more pornographic, and pornography will grow more literary.”

While he still thinks CanLit has a long way to go, Smith sees the Canadian release of Wetlands as a positive development. “I think that this book is being taken seriously as a work of literature. Even if the response has not been favourable as a work of literature, at least it’s in the camp. You know, it’s not being reviewed by Adult Video News, it’s being reviewed by the Globe and Mail.”

Wetlands is published by HarperCollins and The Kindly Ones is published by Random House. Both are in stores now.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.