Paperback – 304 pages

NEW YORK TIMESEDITORS CHOICE The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever writtenMarquis de Sades120 Days of Sodomlanded at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history.

ReadingThe Curse of the Marquis de Sade,with the Marquis, the sabotage of rare manuscript sales, and a massive Ponzi scheme at its center,felt like a twisty waterslide shooting through a sleazy and bizarre landscape. This book is wild.Adam McKay, Academy Awardwinning filmmaker

Described as both one of the most important novels ever written and the gospel of evil,120 Days of Sodomwas 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 consideredthis work to be his greatest transgression.

The original manuscript of120 Days of Sodom,a 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 Grard Lhritier, the self-made son of a plumber who had used his savvy business skills to upend Frances renowned rare-bookmarket. 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 Frances largest-ever Ponzi scheme.

Told with gripping reporting and flush with deceit and scandal,The Curse of the Marquis de Sadeweaves together the sweeping odyssey of120 Days of Sodomand the spectacular rise and fall of Lhritier, once the king of manuscripts and now known to many as the Bernie Madoff of France. At its center isan 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?