Book description
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…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Curse of the Marquis de Sade as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Warner deftly weaves three narratives: the lurid life of the French aristocrat whose sexual exploits led to the coining of the term “sadism,” the fate of his most infamous work, and the collapse of a rare-book investment scheme devised by a man accused of being “the Bernie Madoff of France.”
It’s a lot of ground to cover, but this well-researched, well-crafted account hums along, introducing us to revolutionaries, surrealists, sexologists, high-end book collectors, and more, all fascinated by the handwritten scroll of 120 Days of Sodom.
And it raises questions about what makes a rare and suppressed book truly valuable…
From Alan's list on con artists, swindlers, and other big fat liars.
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