This blog will be the home for a series of posts on the 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (and its various incarnations). I originally started this series on my French Revolution blog, but then decided it deserved a site of its own.

Liaisons is the classic novel about two aristocratic libertines, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, whose sexual gamesmanship has disastrous consequences for them and for others. (A recap of the plot can be found here.)

There are several reasons I’m tackling this novel. One, it’s generally viewed as a scathing depiction of ancien régime aristocracy. (Just how close in time it is to the French Revolution is one of the questions I plan to examine.) Two, the book itself is very much a part of the cultural and intellectual ferment that preceded the Revolution, and Laclos himself played a minor part in it as a political advisor to Louis XVI’s pro-Revolution cousin Louis Philippe d’Orléans (a.k.a. Philippe Égalité). Three, Liaisons, which I would put among my five favorite books of all time, is still a source of endless fascination. There’s a new upcoming Starz series (though it’s a “prequel” and “reimagining,” so I’m somewhat skeptical). Last summer, there was a new radio adaptation on BBC 4 (which had its moments but was badly marred by attempts at hipness and wokeness). France’s Arte channel recently did an hourlong documentary about it called Les Liaisons Scandaleuses. The Christopher Hampton play still gets produced. There’s also a new film of Dangerous Liaisons, the ballet. Plus a recent German musical, available on Amazon Prime.

Why the fascination? Many reasons, I think. The many layers of ambiguity in the story and the characters. (This is the ultimate unreliable-narrator story: some narrators are chronically dishonest, some chronically clueless.) The fact that they exist in a cynical universe much like our own. The fact that the book explores, in surprisingly modern depth and nuance, relations and tensions between the sexes－and the eternal question of sex and love. In my upcoming posts, I’m going to dive into all these aspects and more.

And lastly, another reason I’m blogging Liaisons: I am currently working on a book (my first novel), tentatively titled The Game of Love and Terror, which rewrites Laclos’ ending (no one dies… yet) and then takes the story into the French Revolution and beyond (with an epilogue set during the Bourbon Restoration).

Stay tuned! I hope to make it an interesting ride.