Dangerous Liaisons

Author: Choderlos de Laclos

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $19.99 AUD
  • : 9780140449570
  • : Penguin UK
  • : Penguin
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  • : 0.336
  • : April 2007
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 29mm
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  • : 19.99
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Choderlos de Laclos
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  • : Paperback
  • : 704
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  • : English
  • : 843.6
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Barcode 9780140449570
9780140449570

Description

A new translation of one of the most notorious novels of all time


 


Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious--and deadly--than the players could have ever predicted.


 


For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Reviews

Rowan writes: Laclos' epistolary novel, detailing the debauched amorous exploits of two aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France, must be a serious contender. The work captures a glittering bygone world of leisure and spite where codes of behaviour have been honed to the finest of razor-sharp edges, and where, for those endowed with wit and skill, appearances are infinitely manipulable. The depiction of moral behaviour is stunningly frank, and the deliciously villainous antiheroes make for a compulsive narrative of social intrigue.

Author description

Choderlos de Laclos was born in 1741, at Amiens. He entered the army at the age of 18 and reached the rank of capitaine-commandant without seeing battle. In 1779 he was sent to the island of Aix, where Dangeruous Liaisons was written.