120 Days of Sodom (Arena Books)

This is the only book I have ever thrown away. It is also the only book to ever make me feel physically sick. I ordered this book due mostly to morbid curiosity, and secondly as I was interested (to a degree) in its author and his exploits. Whatever humour may be in this book, I'm afraid, was lost on me. I find it's difficult to appreciate the funny side when childeren are being raped. I couldn't finish the book, so perhaps I'm missing the punchline.

I thought myself relatively unshockable. This book proved otherwise. I found this thoroughly disturbing, and would whole heartedly suggest you buy something else.

Amusing in parts... (2/3 people found this helpful)

I read the book a few years ago and whilst I agree that the Simple Passions were sometimes amusing (if you like to laugh at other people's foibles), I felt the book got nastier as the passions progressed. By the time I read the third and fourth set of passions, I was glad that they were in outline form and that the detail had been lost. The fictional aspect of the book gives way to a vileness that is not found in Justine, for instance.
In all, I think that the book should be restricted. It is more likely a work of a mind frustrated and tortured by imprisonment than a philisophical work.

Tedium redefined (2/3 people found this helpful)

An interesting read, and an insight into a horrific side of human nature; but the repetition is overwhelming and I found myself skipping through endless descriptions of ejaculation, coprophagia and sexual abuse.

I must admit I found some of the author's style interesting as he 'treats' the reader to insights and tries to relay the story in an amusing way.

Worth buying I think, especially if you've watched the film first, then you realise just how mild the film is (and I thought that was off the scale!)

Very overrated (24/45 people found this helpful)

I read this book really knowing very little about it. I had heard it described as 'a catalogue of perversions', and that probably describes it very well. It is not simply that it is a list of extreme perversions, as it is actually quite well written, and has a lot of comedy in it (as paradoxical as that might seem considering the subject matter).

The problem I have with it is that it has no real direction or meaning; it is like a shopping list of violent sexual crimes with some humour thrown in. It needs something else if it is going to rise above that.

If you like your comedy to include priests bribing pre-pubescent girls to urinate in front of them; pregnant women being rolled down a slope in a barrel that has had nails hammered through it; or early teenage girls being forced to eat excrement and having their eyes poked out and their nipples cut off, then this is for you. I suspect that for the vast majority of people it won't be their cup of tea.

Why this has become a classic is beyond me. If it wasn't for the fact that Sade enjoyed this kind of lifestyle himself (albeit in a milder form), then he may have been able to write a book that didn't come over as something that he wrote because he found extreme sexual perversions, torture and murder as something erotic.

Comic and cruel (48/49 people found this helpful)

De Sade's opus and no surprise that his name would forever more be synonymous with vicious acts meted out purely for sexual gratification. A catalogue of sexual deviations, degenerating into ever-increasing cruelty as a group of captives (mainly children) are tormented and tortured to death.

An excellent translation. It is a surprisingly comic work which draws the reader in. It is also a subversive work, portraying the horrors as perpetrated by those with the unlimited resources to indulge their murderous tastes and the power or connections to avoid having to answer for them. Often they represent the law, as with the judge who always sentences everyone appearing before him to death, so that he can watch the execution from an overlooking apartment whilst fornicating at the same time.

Written in prison, it is incomplete. Only the first 30 days have been written out in full; the rest being in note form. It still makes for entertaining reading, although it is probably this incompleteness which makes the entire work disproportionately concerned with eating excrement (one of the earlier and milder sexual quirks).

Even in a world largely numbed to horror, some of this stuff is still unbelievable. Essential reading for anyone interested in the human psyche.

Marquis De Sade D.A.F.

Reader Reviews:

Vile (1/2 people found this helpful)

Amusing in parts... (2/3 people found this helpful)

Tedium redefined (2/3 people found this helpful)

Very overrated (24/45 people found this helpful)

Comic and cruel (48/49 people found this helpful)

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