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Title details for The Curse of the Marquis de Sade by Joel Warner - Available

The Curse of the Marquis de Sade

A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History

by Joel Warner
Stephen Mendel
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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • 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.
“Reading The Curse of the Marquis de Sade, with the Marquis, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center, felt like a twisty waterslide shooting through a sleazy and bizarre landscape. This book is wild.”—Adam McKay, Academy Award–winning filmmaker
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?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 21, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593667477
      • File size: 268827 KB
      • Duration: 09:20:03

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 19, 2022
      In this illuminating account, journalist Warner (The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny with Peter McGraw) follows the trail of the Marquis de Sade’s original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, an unfinished novel of sex and sadism, written on a scroll in 1785 while the author was a prisoner in the Bastille. Warner brings to life its various owners over two centuries, including French noblemen and German gay rights pioneers. In 1985, it ended up in the hands of rare manuscript dealer Gérard Lhéritier, a Frenchman who was more Bernie Madoff than the socialite man of letters he portrayed himself to be. His company, Aristophil, bought rare manuscripts and antique writings, then sold shares of them to unsuspecting investors at artificially inflated prices. When the Aristophil house of cards collapsed in 2014, the French government seized the manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, along with Lhéritier’s other assets. As of 2021, its estimated worth is €4.55 million and it is held in the National Library of France. The wealth of detail never slows Warner’s well-paced narrative. Literary history buffs will want to check this out. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Listeners, be reassured. This dual history of literature's most reviled author and his most notorious creation is practically free of sex and brutality, indeed of any passion at all except bibliomania. With the decline of handwriting, the market for rare and unique manuscripts has grown dramatically. Few are as rare and unique as Sade's 120 DAYS OF SODOM, written on reverse sides of a scroll secreted in his cell in the Bastille. Versatile narrator Stephen Mendel spins a tale full of droll and ironic turns, clearly savoring every minute. His measured delivery brings out every nuance of this well-researched and sharply detailed history, recreating familiar scenes like the storming of the Bastille with the freshness and urgency of a news report. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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