However the novel's subject matter made the publisher nervous, and the book was printed in a limited edition of 712 copies available only through subscription and selected bookstores.
Highly productive, Duvert soon produced three successive novels: Interdit de séjour and Portrait d'homme-couteau in 1969, and Le Voyageur in 1970, which were also sold by subscription.
As well as their political aspect in promoting sexual relations between adults and children, and criticising bourgeois society, these first four novels featured narrative and stylistic experimentation in the form of rambling style, typographic games, the absence or multiplicity of plots, jumbled chronology or facts, and lack of punctuation.
Thanks to Roland Barthes, Duvert achieved public recognition in 1973 with his novel Paysage de fantaisie (Strange Landscape), which won the Prix Médicis, and was greeted warmly by critics.
To reach a wider audience and raise awareness of his ideas, he decided to write a novel that would incorporate his favourite themes while being less sexually explicit and written in a classic form.
In the 1980s, Duvert published L'enfant au masculin (1980), in which he further expounded his sexual philosophy; a novel Un Anneau d'Argent à l'Oreille; and a book of aphorisms Abécédaire Malveillant: unlike his earlier writings, their critical reception was mostly indifferent or poor.
His death briefly raised his media profile in France again; obituaries noted the quality of his writing, but also reflected upon the change in official attitudes to child sexuality.