Synopsis
The 120 Days of Sodom is set in a remote medieval castle, high in the mountains and surrounded by forests, detached from the rest of the world and not set at any specific point in time (although it is implied at the start that the events in the story take place either during or shortly after the Thirty Years' War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648).
The novel takes place over five months, November to March. Four wealthy libertines lock themselves in a castle, the Château de Silling, along with a number of victims and accomplices. (The description of Silling matches de Sade's own castle, the Château de Lacoste.) They intend to listen to various tales of depravity from four veteran prostitutes, which will inspire them to engage in similar activities with their victims.
It is not a complete novel. Only the first section is written in detail. After that, the remaining three parts are written as a draft, in note form, with Sade's footnotes to himself still present in most translations. Either at the outset, or during the writing of the work, Sade had evidently decided he would not be able to complete it in full and elected to write out the remaining three-quarters in brief and finish it later.
The story does portray some black humor, and Sade seems almost light-hearted in his introduction, referring to the reader as "friend reader". In this introduction, he contradicts himself, at one point insisting that one should not be horrified by the 600 passions outlined in the story because everybody has their own tastes, but at the same time going out of his way to warn the reader of the horrors that lay ahead, suggesting that the reader should have doubts about continuing. Consequently he glorifies as well as vilifies the four main protagonists, alternately declaring them freethinking heroes and debased villains, often in the same passage.
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