Marquis De Sade: A Biography - Softcover

Reseña del editor

The name Sade has become synonymous with cruelty. To some he was a monster and a criminal; to others, an apostle of freedom who dared to expose society's hypocrisy in sexual matters. This biography aims to describe the real Marquis de Sade.

Contraportada

In this definitive biography, the first to have complete access to the Sade family archives, Maurice Lever brilliantly reconstructs the life and times of the author of 'Justine' and 'The 120 days of Sodom'. Bringing the 18th century to life as vividly as Simon Schama does in 'Citizens', Lever paints a minutely detailed portrait of the aristocratic milieu that produced the 'divine marquis'.

'The wind whistles through almost every page of this bracing biography, against a background of the heaviest breathing since Bram Stocker's 'Dracula'. The 'Marquis de Sade' is the spectre at the feast of European Letters, the prodigal son invited in from the cold only to leave footprints of human blood on the welcome-mat.'
J.G. BALLARD, 'Daily Telegraph'

'Maurice Lever tells the story with zest, and also tells more of it than we have had before... Lever is a thoughtful, fair-minded and engaging guide who wears his massive learning lightly.
... [His] Sade has many warts and few redeeming features. But this absorbing life shows that, bad or not, the Marquis was all too human.'
DAVID COWARD, 'Times Literary Supplement'

'Excellently translated... lucidly written and admirably... brings new insights into this most perplexing personality of Western literature'
FRANCINE Du PLESSIX GRAY, 'New Yorker'