The Mystified Magistrate

Published for the first time in English is the comic and scandalous light
fiction of the Marquis de Sade, who--despite controversy surrounding him--
possessed a mordant but undeniable sense of humor. The title piece of this
volume is a delightful skewering of the Provencal judge who sentenced Sade to
death in absentia in 1772.The great virtue of this volume is that it reveals a lighter, comic side of Sade. He was a man obsessed, like many great writers, and his obsessions are still present here: his hatred of all things pretentious, his loathing of a corrupt judicial system, his damning of hypocrisy and false piety. One of the great anarchists of all time, he was nevertheless far from mad (as many pretended) and these works of fiction shed another light on this most feverish of minds. But however heavy the subject, The Mystified Magistrate is infused with a light touch; it is revealing but never offensive.