Los 120 días de Sodoma del Marqués de Sade relata la historia de cuatro hombres adinerados que esclavizan a 24 víctimas, en su mayoría adolescentes, y las torturan sexualmente mientras escuchan historias contadas por viejas prostitutas.

Dégoûtant. Répugnant. Choquant. Extrême. Personne ne peut mélanger l'érotique et l'horreur comme Sade, et c'est ici, dans ces 120 Journées éprouvantes, qu'il est à son meilleur. Il y a tant de sexualité dans ces pages, bien entendu, que je suis tout à la fois surpris qu'on ne parle plus souvent des horreurs qui - je crois - surpassent en tout, en nombre comme en imagination, ce qui tient à la pornographie. Oui, l'horreur, l'immonde, l'atroce sont bien là : et, franchement, à part peut-être le 300 MILLIONS de BLAKE BUTLER, je ne connais aucune autre œuvre capable de s'approcher de près (ni même de loin) du contenu de celle-ci ; et encore 300 MILLIONS étant un must du genre, les 120 Journées restent littéralement indépassable.
Certainement pas pour les faibles de cœur.
Et tellement épouvantable qu'on ne peut pas le lâcher. ( )

originally paperback, bound later

Whatever you may have heard, its worse. The frame story is about 4 of the vilest men to walk the earth. They retreat to a remote castle to be able to indulge themselves without fear of interruption. Those they take with them include 16 kidnapped teens aged 12-15, 8 boys and 8 girls. The main point of the story is a catalogue of every sexual fetish the author can imagine. Some are told each day by 4 storytellers who accompany the group.
Only the first 30 days are told in detail the rest is just sketched as the work was never finished. Just to give some idea of how dark things get, the majority of characters don't make it out alive.
The score i've given this is only based on the quality of the writing NOT on the content.
NO ONE should read this except maybe people who want to be Profilers like on 'Criminal Minds'. ( )

I decided on pure whim to make a go at this and [b:Justine|796267|Justine|Marquis de Sade|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1178444302s/796267.jpg|13268607] last year. (They're both on that silly [b:1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die|16047158|1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die|Peter Boxall|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348601840s/16047158.jpg|814053] list I'm sort of picking off of.) Honestly, I didn't make it past the opening with this. I got to the guy who had several inches of filth caked about his nether regions due to hatred of bathing*, gagged, and quit. Didn't even make it to the torture.

While researching some banned book issues recently, I came across this from Wikipedia:

Beginning in 1763, Sade lived mainly in or near Paris. Several prostitutes there complained about mistreatment by him and he was put under surveillance by the police, who made detailed reports of his activities. [...] The first major scandal occurred on Easter Sunday in 1768, in which Sade procured the sexual services of a woman, Rose Keller, a widow-beggar who approached him for alms. He told her she could make money by working for him-she understood her work to be that of a housekeeper. At his chateau at Arcueil, de Sade ripped her clothes off, threw her on a divan and tied her by the four limbs. Then he whipped her, made various incisions on her body into which he poured hot wax, and then beat her. He repeated this process seven or eight times, when she finally escaped by climbing out of a second-floor window and running away. [...] In 1772, an episode in Marseille involved the non-lethal poisoning of prostitutes with the supposed aphrodisiac Spanish fly and sodomy with Latour, his manservant. That year, the two men were sentenced to death in absentia for sodomy and the poisoning.

So next time you see someone holding the Marquis up as some sort of misunderstood antihero, maybe remind them that in real life (not just book life) he was a rich dude who got away with the non-consensual torture of beggars and prostitutes because of his station in society. Sometimes depraved is just depraved, and literature isn't all that literary.

*gross stuff spoiler tagged, in case you happen to be eating when you see this