Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History

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, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center, reading The Curse Of the Marquis de Sade 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 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 Bastil