THE CURSE OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

The Marquis de Sade is a name that would light up any literary history; this one focuses on the life of his most famous manuscript.

In 1785, Donatien Alphonse François (1740-1814), aka the Marquis de Sade, wrote 120 Days of Sodom, composing the manuscript in tiny handwriting on a scroll of 157,000 words while incarcerated atop the Liberty Tower at the Bastille. In it, “four wealthy degenerates” conduct a four-month orgy with 32 subordinates, and their perversions only escalate in their depravity and horror. De Sade's name would become synonymous with sexual pleasure through pain, and this story of his growing reputation through the years explains why. Though journalist Warner looks at the development of "bibliophilia's most shadowy realm: the world of erotic books,” his primary focus is on the journey of the 120 Days manuscript through its many owners, court battles, a brazen theft, its place at the center of "the largest Ponzi scheme in French history,” and its eventual acquisition by the French government for 4.5 million euros. Warner tells this history in alternating chapters devoted to the life of de Sade, the peripatetic journeys of the 120 Days scroll, and its role as a prized commodity among bibliophiles. The result is an occasionally confusing chronology that jumps back and forth among the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, but the author provides several valuable maps and a cast of characters at the beginning of the book, which help orient readers. Ultimately, the narrative’s greatest scandal is not the licentious behavior of de Sade, whom the surrealists dubbed the "freest spirit who ever lived,” nor the literary stature of his transgressive works but rather the sheer dimension of the investment fraud, a “decade-long, continent-spanning, billion-euro con,” in which the scroll played a central role. As Warner demonstrates, de Sade’s depravity pales in comparison to the gyrations of financial tycoons who sought to capitalize on his most monumental work.

An engrossing history of the travels of a notorious manuscript across nations and centuries.