Crimes of Love

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating stories of love gone wrong
Review: Like other eighteenth-century "libertine novels," especially Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons, The Crimes of Love tells us what happens when extremely virtuous characters collide with extremely evil ones. And as with other classic writers of the late eighteenth century, the French here is easy for foreign readers. But by contrast with the novels (and the real-life acts) that have given Sade such a bad reputation, these stories are economical and interest us far more through psychology than through cruelty or perversion. To the five entertaining stories he has selected, Michel Delon adds the author's "Idea on novels" and an informative dossier.

This review is based on the French edition published in Gallimard's Folio series. The only recent translation (out of print) was published in the textually unreliable Bantam Classics series. A new translation of these stories would be a worthy project for an intermediate or advanced student of French.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: This is better than the last book I read of Marquis de Sade's. However,...I have discovered that the other book was one of his worst but was still great. This book is about many sexual encounters that many people have. It's just very interesting and highly recommended. Can't say more than that.