THE CURSE OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

u003cbu003eu003ciu003eNEW YORK TIMES u003c/iu003eEDITORS’ CHOICE • The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written—Marquis de Sade’s u003ciu003e120 Days of Sodomu003c/iu003e—landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history.u003cbru003eu003cbru003e“Reading u003ciu003eThe Curse of the Marquis de Sade, u003c/iu003ewith the Marquis, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center,u003ciu003e u003c/iu003efelt like a twisty waterslide shooting through a sleazy and bizarre landscape. This book is wild.”—Adam McKay, Academy Award–winning filmmakeru003c/bu003eu003cbru003eu003cbru003eDescribed as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of evil,” u003ciu003e120 Days of Sodomu003c/iu003e 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.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eThe original manuscript of u003ciu003e120 Days of Sodom, u003c/iu003ea tiny scroll penned in the bowels of the Bastille in Paris, would embark on a centuries-spanning odyssey across Europe, passing from nineteenth-century banned book collectors to pioneering sex researchers to avant-garde artists before being hidden away from Nazi book burnings. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when the scroll 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 the sale opened the door to vendettas by the government, feuds among 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.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eTold with gripping reporting and flush with deceit and scandal, u003ciu003eThe Curse of the Marquis de Sadeu003c/iu003e weaves together the sweeping odyssey of u003ciu003e120 Days of Sodomu003c/iu003e 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?