In the tradition of erotic confession (with a catch), as delicately written as the tales of AnaOs Nin or Pauline Reage, Smith's pornographic novel explores female desire. The unnamed narrator n gorgeous, sophisticated, bored, underemployed n embarks on a series of intense urban encounters in an unnamed city. Her desire is limitless: passionate, playful, intense, humorous and without reserve. Part Jean Genet, part Molly Bloom, partPenthouse Letters, Diana is a literary experiment, a modernist tale told in deft prose, whose goal is to arouse and to paint a sexual portrait of a city.Diana: A Diary in the Second Person is a novel about seduction and desire, a pornographic tale by one of our most celebrated and talented novelists.

Russell Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Halifax, Canada. He studied French literature at Queen's, Poitiers and Paris (III). Since 1990 he has lived in Toronto, where he works as a freelance journalist. He has published articles in The Globe and Mail, Details, Travel and Leisure, Toronto Life, Flare, NOW and other journals, and short fiction and poetry in Queen's Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Quarry, the New Quarterly, Carousel, Kairos, Toronto Life and other journals. Russell appears frequently on television and radio as a cultural commentator. In 1995 he won a Gold Medal at the American City And Regional Magazine Awards. Russell Smith is the author of six works of fiction; his first novel, How Insensitive, was short-listed for the Smithbooks/Books In Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. In 2005 he was a juror for the Governor General's Award in Fiction (in English).

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