120 Days of Sodom

by Marquis de Sade

Overview

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 crowing acheivement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625585981
Publisher:	Start Publishing LLC
Publication date:	02/18/2013
Series:	Unexpurgated Start Publishing LLC
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	450
Sales rank:	548,314
File size:	514 KB

About the Author

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), was a French aristocrat and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography, as well as some strictly philosophical works.

Will McMorran (translator) is a senior lecturer in French and comparative literature at Queen Mary, University of London.
 
Thomas Wynn (translator) is reader and director of research in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University.

Editorial Reviews

Sade’s masterpiece was The 120 Days of Sodom, which has just been published as a Penguin Classic for the first time … the great merit of this edition is the thoroughly excellent translation by [Will] McMorran and [Thomas] Wynn. It has none of the phony archaism of earlier English translations. Instead it is like a window, allowing us to have as clear of view as possible of Sade’s mind and world.”
—The Economist

“Without in any way giving in to hyperbole, I would say that this translation is a 21st century monument, changing not only the way in which we view the French 18th century, but providing a guide to the present and future.”
—Andrew Hussey
 
“We thought this translation was quite exceptional in its capacity to capture the true voice of this strange and difficult eighteenth-century text, the textual and editorial scholarship of the translators, their wonderful handling of the terminology and the diction of the original, along with the fluency of their translation, and the ways in which it creates for the first time for Anglophone readers a properly accurate version of Sade’s text.” 
—Ian Patterson

From the Publisher