The First Novels in Five Different Languages That Were Horny as Hell

5 Catalan: ‘The Romance of Evast and Blaquerna’

In 1283, poet, philosopher and religious freak Ramon Llull wrote the first known novel in the Catalan language, and one of the first in all of Europe. Despite his name, this guy did almost nothing for the lullz. He designed a philosophical system that managed to get art, science and religion wrong, in that the system was called “Art,” and it was designed to scientifically prove the veracity of Christianity.

So it should come as no surprise that, despite its title, his book is kind of an anti-romance novel. This is the tale of a brave virgin and his lifelong journey to help his friends quit crankin’ it. A young man named Blanquerna must decide between a life as a debauched sea merchant like his father, or that of a sexless hermit. He chooses the latter, and embarks on a lifelong quest to be alone and pure. He navigates a world of sex workers, maidens and other forbidden delights, and gets so good at being a Christian prude that they make him Pope. He speed-runs the papacy, retires to the life of hermitude he’d always dreamed of, and writes a big book of meditations to help monks quit thinkin’ about boobies.

4 Sanskrit: ‘Kādambarī’

This 7th-century novel is very Dune-like in that it is impenetrably complicated, the author’s son had to finish it after he died. There are a lot of subplots — one sizable chunk is apparently written from the point-of-view of a parrot telling the story second-hand — and the love interest doesn’t show up until halfway through. But this love story is so powerful, there are two Indian languages that still use “kadambari” as slang for hookin’ up.

The hero Chandrapeeda and heroine Kadambari fall swiftly, sexily in love, but Kadambari has taken a vow of celibacy for a dumb reason. She gets so horny, she “grows pale from desire” and ultimately makes herself sick, but she still won’t break the vow nobody asked her to make. At some point, the hero becomes cursed and falls into a coma, and Kadambari almost Romeo-and-Juliets herself. She instead hangs out with his lifeless body, while his spirit becomes the Moon God and does Moon God things. He eventually re-enters his body, wakes up — and briefly mentions that oh yeah, he had a Moon wife named Rohini — and they finally hook up and live happily ever after. 

3 Kannada: ‘Indira Bai’ and Marathi: ‘Yamuna Paryatan’

These two books were published about 40 years apart in the 19th century, but they both deal with a lot of the same themes. Indira Bai is, first of all, decidedly not horny, as the protagonist Indira goes from child bride to child widow, all before she’s a teenager. When she takes up the forbidden hobby of reading, her family sends her to live with a traveling gang of widows who are forced to sing hymns until they die to keep them from getting educated or remarried.

Yamuna Paryatan, similarly, follows Yamuna, a young Hindu widow who gets treated so poorly by her family and society, she converts to Christianity. Among other indecencies, she had to continually shave her head, because her dead husband would rot in hell if she ever looked hot. Not surprisingly, it was written by a Christian missionary to demonize Hinduism and scoop up some converts.

None of this sounds very horny, right? Well, tell that to author Baba Padmanji’s contemporaries. While her later work was praised, critics reserved rare criticism for Yamuna Paryatan for promoting vulgarities like… sexually active widows and Christian feminism? Okay buddy, whatever gets your rocks off.

2 Japanese: ‘The Tale of Genji’

Published around 1021 A.D., The Tale of Genji is the oldest known novel written by a woman, poet and noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. She beat the odds by managing to actually learn to read, something that was reserved for noble men at the time, and gained a reputation as a writer while she managed widowhood and single motherhood. When she was invited to serve an Empress, daily court life entered her writing. And daily court life apparently got mighty juicy.

The story revolves around the Freudian nightmare that is Hikaru Genji’s lovelife. Genji does a lot of dating, but his favorite girlfriend is Lady Fujitsubo, one of his father’s many concubines. His father, in turn, favors this particular lover because she looks exactly like Genji’s deceased mother. Lady Fujitsubo is terrified of being found out for screwing her emperor husband’s son, so she becomes a nun to prove to the world that she hates sex. Never touches the stuff. Genji goes off into the world and dates other women that look like his mother-lover, but the two reunite later in life to form a crucial political alliance. The lesson being: If you never move on from your first crush, you too can be a feudal failson.

1 Chinese: ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’

This is one of the first “based on a true story” stories of all time, and it’s much more faithful to the original events than, say, The Blind Side. It’s a wildly complicated tome, reflecting the unpredictable, unbelievable escapades of the feudal lords who fought to either destroy or restore the faltering Han dynasty.

Among the many romances are a love triangle with a young maiden named Diaochan, who is puppetted by the evil minister Wang Yun to flirt with and sow discord between two opposing warlords. Then you’ve got Lady Sun, who was married off to a warlord in hopes of capturing him and holding him hostage for his land, but they instead escaped and lived happily ever after. Had enough love scenes? We’ve got eunuchs, too. The Ten Attendants were a council of eunuchs who assassinated General He Jin, whose followers went on a rampage and murdered anyone who so much as looked like a eunuch. The more we think about it, the more likely it seems that author Luo Guanzhong was ripping off George R.R. Martin.