A new uncensored translation of de Sade's literary outrage, in which he collates a systematic psychopathology of human sexual disorder. Four libertines barricade themselves in a remote castle with both male and female victims and accomplices for four months. What follows is a precipitous orgy of sodomy, coprophagia and rape leading inexorably towards torture and human decimation. This masterpiece of black humour, pornographic to a point of excess, reveals the seminal origins of contemporary culture's fascination with cruelty and violence.