Book description
Published in 1782, just years before the French Revolution, Les
Liaisons Dangereuses is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of
a decadent society. At its centre are two aristocrats, former lovers,
who embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to
bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de
Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent convent
girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous
married woman. But as their intrigues become more duplicitous and they
find their human pawns responding in ways they could not have predicted,
the consequences prove to be more serious, and deadly, than Merteuil and
Valmont could have guessed.
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.
Helen Constantine has translated Th ophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de
Maupin for Penguin Classics which will be published in 2004 with an
introduction by Patricia Duncker. And with David Constantine, she has
translated a volume of Henri Michaux's poetry, Spaced and Displaced
(Bloodaxe). She lives in Oxford.
