Sebastien Roch is a brilliantly drawn portrait of a boy's psychological, sexual and political coming of age in provincial France against the background of the Belle Epoque. We follow Sebastien as he enters a jesuit college as a natural, unspoiled innocent child and develops into a corrupt, disillusioned, tortured adolescent until his senseless death at the age of 21 on the battlefield.

It is a powerful finale to Mirbeau's trilogy of "angry young man" novels. The harrowing story of the perversion of innocence is offset by Mirbeau's lyrical descriptions, capturing in words the serene impressionism of Monet and the violent pornographic excesses of Feliciens Rops.