The 120 Days of Sodom is "the most impure tale that has ever been told since our world began". It was written by the Marquis de Sade, in the space of 37 days, while imprisoned in the Bastille. Fearing confiscation, he had to write it on a continuous roll of paper, made up of small pieces glued together, and to hide it inside a dildo. The original manuscript is now on display in Paris, and is the third most expensive kept in France, insured for 12 million euros. Four unbelievably wealthy aristocrats lock themselves in a remote medieval castle, along with forty-two victims and accomplices. Ensues the often unbearable description of six hundred perversions, often applied to a victim while the narrator speaks; tales of torture, anal rape, coprophilia, paedophilia, in an obscene gradation that culminates in slaughter. This unfinished novel is a testimony to how dark the human soul can become when pushed to its limits; it transcends pornography, and no reader can emerge from it unscathed.
