Pascal Quignard is a brilliant French prose writer, essayist, and translator, a winner of the Goncourt Prize. Each of his books, beginning with the much-discussed essay “Sex and Fear,” French intellectuals regard as a revelation. Articles and monographs are devoted to this living classic; his work has repeatedly become a central topic of international symposia. Quignard’s book “The Secret Life” is a kind of sexual anthropology crafted by the master in the magical space between novel, essay, and meditation.