New Robbe-Grillet Novel Pornographic?

In his blog at The Guardian , Maxim Jakubowski writes about the new Alain Robbe-Grillet novel and the rising controversy about its pornographic contents:

However, even in France, the recently published novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet—Un Roman Sentimental—is creating something of a stir, with calls from various sources for its actual ban. Publishers Fayard, aware of its potential to disturb, even went to the extent of issuing the book with pages uncut, sporting a sober, purely typographical cover, with each copy shrink-wrapped and featuring a warning sticker to the effect that “this is a fairy tale for adults and a fantasy that might well shock sensitive souls”. Were Robbe-Grillet not a member of the respected Academie Francaise and best known for having invented the ascetic and stylised form of the nouveau roman, it is unlikely his novel could have been published at all even in these liberated times.

Working within the Sadean tradition, this actually sounds pretty interesting:

There is little doubt that Robbe-Grillet is a major writer and the precise, almost analytical prose that unfolds over the 239 short chapters is classically elegant even as the action moves from disturbing to perverse and well beyond. The book is intended to shock but also to arouse in the most unhealthy of ways, as an hypnotic waltz of domination and submission forces the reader to face his or her own morality or even sanity. Excessive it no doubt is, but it also engenders a worrisome form of fascination for the evil inside us, the temptations of sex for its own sake.

No word on whether or not anyone is translating this into English (I suspect someone will bring it out), but Jakubowski ends his post by calling out American and British writers:

Provocation, titillation or an intellectual divertissement? I remain uncertain. But one thing’s for sure: I cannot imagine any English or American writer daring to take such an unholy risk.