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The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History
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About This Book
The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written—Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom—landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history. Described as both "one of the most important novels ever written" and "the gospel of evil," 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word "sadism," which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression. The original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, a tiny scroll penned in the bowels of the Bastille in Paris, would embark on a centuries-spanning odyssey across Europe, passing from nineteenth-century banned book collectors to pioneering sex researchers to avant-garde artists before being hidden away from Nazi book burnings. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when the scroll was purchased for millions by Gérard Lhéritier, the self-made son of a plumber who had used his savvy business skills to upend France's renowned rare-book market. But the sale opened the door to vendettas by the government, feuds among antiquarian booksellers, manuscript sales derailed by sabotage, a record-breaking lottery jackpot, and allegations of a decade-long billion-euro con, the specifics of which, if true, would make the scroll part of France's largest-ever Ponzi scheme. Told with gripping reporting and flush with deceit and scandal, The Curse of the Marquis de Sade weaves together the sweeping odyssey of 120 Days of Sodom and the spectacular rise and fall of Lhéritier, once the "king of manuscripts" and now known to many as the Bernie Madoff of France. At its center is an urgent question for all those who cherish the written word: As the age of handwriting comes to an end, what do we owe the original texts left behind?
Reviews
"Some readers will regard this as an esoteric exercise, but for bibliophiles, it is a feast and even leaves readers wondering if, as some claim, the manuscript is cursed."
"The absence of readings like this in Warner's book is unfortunate because the enigma surrounding a manuscript's value — the ballooning price of a brittle scroll bearing an infamous but rarely read novel — is his story's major theme."
"These depravities, in turn, are interspersed with a third narrative, subtitled 'The Empire of Letters,' which follows the scroll in recent decades, when an entirely different form of lawlessness came to be associated with Sade ..."
"Ultimately, the narrative's greatest scandal is not the licentious behavior of de Sade..."
"Literary history buffs will want to check this out."
"is the story Warner tells with skill, from beginning to end."
"Spanning hundreds of years and multiple countries, The Curse of the Marquis de Sade is impressive in scope."
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