PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewWarner’s research and extensive interviews help him shuttle across centuries to depict remarkable characters ... The Curse of the Marquis de Sade is nevertheless more demure than one might expect. Warner’s narrative tracks the scroll across centuries but never really delves into its content ... The absence of readings like this in Warner’s book is unfortunate because the enigma surrounding a manuscript’s value — the ballooning price of a brittle scroll bearing an infamous but rarely read novel — is his story’s major theme. As disputes over the scroll intensify in the book, readers might wonder why we value anything.
