The English translation of Marcel Henaff’s theoretical framework arrives just in time for our fin de siecle reconsideration of Sade. Yet given our predisposition to read the excesses of Sade literally, if we read him at all, this book sets out to fight such literalism with a simple credo: ‘If our era is once again judging Sade dangerous, this means the danger is in our era itself.’ . . . Henaff postulates that the Sadean text has two main areas of inquiry, poetics and economics, and that these discourses undergo transformations as the result of the orgiastic manipulations and exaltations on every page of Sade’s fiction. . . . Henaff’s book shows without a doubt that what Sade’s writing depicts is the body’s entrance ‘into an ear of postamorous relationships.’ This, of course, is the era we live in also, which means, in a sense, we are finally ready to read Sad