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.
“With the Marquis de Sade, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center, reading The Curse Of the Marquis felt like I was on a twisty water slide shooting through a sleazy and bizarre landscape. This book is wild.”—Adam McKay
Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of evil,” 120 Days of Sodom was penned by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded his own execution, and inspired the word “sadism,” the term for receiving pleasure from pain. But of all his crimes, Sade considered 120 Days of Sodom his greatest transgression.
Composed in the bowels of the Bastille in Paris, the tiny scroll on which it was written would embark on a centuries-spanning odyssey across Europe, passing from nineteenth-century banned book collectors to pioneering sex researchers to avant-garde artists and hidden away from Nazi book burnings. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when it 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 soon the sale brought to light festering government vendettas, feuding 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 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?
- ISBN10 0593135687
- ISBN13 9780593135686
- Publish Date 21 February 2023
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Random House Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780593135686