Product Description

This unusual biography of the Marquis De Sade draws upon thousands of pages of correspondence between De Sade and his plain bourgeois wife, to explore in historical and psychological detail what it was like to live with such a man.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250619 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Deranged, but extremely courteous." That was the verdict on the honourable army discharge of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade and it's vindicated--and how--by Francine du Plessix Gray's new domestic biography of the world's most famous and least understood sex maniac. Sade today tends to get caricatured as either monster or philosopher, but Gray's Sade is very much a man of his upbringing: of a dysfunctional family of the debauched French aristocracy in political crisis. While one might ask why Sade (rather than any other dysfunctional debauched French aristocrat) became the man he was, Gray argues convincingly that it was the two women closest to him who produced Sade the writer, author of Justine and 120 Days of Sodom: his mother-in-law incarcerating him and forcing him to write, his wife acting as adoring but critical audience. Sade here is a loner, forever on stage to an audience, whether real or imagined. Gray sketches in skilfully the complex political situation which has seen Sade demonised both as the worst excesses of the French aristocracy and the worst excesses of the Terror which decimated it. At Home With the Marquis de Sade is a racy read, but never prurient: even when indulging questionable pet theories, Gray's razor-sharp intelligence shines through.--Alan Stewart

Review
This ground-breaking account of the scandalous life and violent times of the Marquis de Sade explores his relationship with his family. (Kirkus UK)

Customer Reviews

Life at the edge in every sense
Forget all the babble you think you know about the Marquis de Sade, what you get here is a beautifully readable account of an unsurpassably enigmatic character. Sade weaves his way through France before, during and after the Revolution as though inhabiting another plane of existence altogether. Brilliantly written, no dross and very concise, cogent, inciteful and interesting.

Clever
The author uses the surviving letters of De Sade and her imagination to produce a very plausible biography . Much of it seen through the eyes of his immediate family.
The skill lies in managing to do this without glaring anachronisms and the author manages this very well .Highly recommended.