"I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure." *** Wish List ***

DESCRIPTION

The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes. The book was written while Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille and the manuscript was lost during the storming of the Bastille. Sade wrote that he "wept tears of blood" over the manuscript's loss. Many consider this to be Sade crowning achievement

FACT

• Sadism, which refers to the enjoyment of inflicting pain, is derived from the name of Marquis de Sade

• He was a French nobleman, philosopher, revolutionary politician, writer

• This book and other of his works were secretly written while imprisoned in Bastille in 1785

• He was arrested in 1777 for several accusations of sexual assault, rape, and sodomy and sentenced to prison till death.

• His books often faced censorship and were banned in the UK till 1950s

• Reviled as of the most sexually violent books ever written

• Inspired Surrealist artists who agreed with his views of sexual freedom

• Cinema interpretation, the disturbing Salò (1976) by Pier Paolo Pasolini

- He commissioned erotic illustration to accompany his books

PRAISE

He is best known for his erotic works, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. He was a proponent of extreme freedom, unrestrained by morality, religion or law.

“Sade is surrealist in sadism.” —André Breton

“Marquis de Sade is the personified perversion.”Miki Bunge, founder of indie publisher Goliath Books

This distressing but hugely important text has influenced countless individuals throughout history: Flaubert and Baudelaire both read Sade; the surrealists were obsessed with him; film-makers like Pasolini saw parallels with twentieth-century history in his writings; and feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Angela Carter clashed over him. This new translation brings Sade's provocative novel into Penguin Classics for the first time, and will reignite the debate around this most controversial of writers

ARTICLES

‘The most impure tale ever written’: how The 120 Days of Sodom became a ‘classic’ The Guardian

Who Was the Marquis de Sade: Even in the age of Fifty Shades of Grey, the 18th-century libertine is as shocking as ever The Smithsonian Magazine

Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

Marquise de Sade

"Life is just an uninterrupted series of pains and pleasures"

DESCRIPTION

'I have become whore through goodwill and libertine through virtue.' Orphaned and penniless at the age of twelve, the beautiful and devout Justine embarks upon her remarkable odyssey. Her steadfast faith and naive trust in trust in everyone she meets destine her from the outset for sexual exploitation and martyrdom. The unending catalogue of disasters that befall her, during which she is subject to any number of perverse practices, illustrate Sade's belief in the primacy of Nature over civilization. Virtue is no match for vice, and as criminality and violence triumph, Justine is doomed to suffer. Sade's writings have become a byword for transgression and obscenity, and the logical amorality of his philosophy still has the power to shock. By overturning social, religious, and political norms he puts under scrutiny conventional ideas of justice, power, life, and death. Justine is a ferocious physical and intellectual assault on absolute notions of good and evil, and as such, one of the earliest literary manifestos for atheism.

FACTS

- Justine, a novella written in 1787 during a 2 weeks in Bastille jail

- Extended and more graphic version later released as Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu in 1791, first book published by Sade

- Various film versions such as Marquis de Sade: Justine (1969) and Marquis de Sade's Justined (1977) , Vice and Virtue,