The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History

First edition. Hardcover, signed. First edition, first printing. Hard cover. Crown Publishing Group (NY) (2023) New in new dust jacket. Signed by author. Brand new, never read First edition, first printing. Full number line present. SIGNED, DATED, AND LOCATED by the author to the full title page on the date of the book's release, in his hometown of Denver! "2/22/23 Denver" Personally S,D,L by the author on THE FIRST stop of this book's promotional tour. Dust jacket covered in archival quality Mylar. Photos available upon request. The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written Marquis de Sade s 120 Days of Sodom landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history. Reading The 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 Award winning filmmaker Described as both one of the most important novels ever written and the gospel of evil, 120 Days of Sodom 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. The original manuscript of 120 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 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. Told with gripping reporting and flush with deceit and scandal, The Curse of the Marquis de Sade weaves together the sweeping odyssey of 120 Days of Sodom 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?