L E S . L I A I S O N S

I chose this when

BOOKS ETC

asked me to recommend one of their

BOOKS FROM ABROAD

*

Chooser's name:
Toby Litt

Favourite book from abroad:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses

By:
Choderlos de Laclos

Please tell us in a couple of sentences why you have chosen this book:

One of the reasons I read books, and more particularly novels, is to find out what it means to be truly adult. (What, in other words, do other people really do, really think?) I think Les Liaisons Dangereuses, of all the novels I've read, is the most truly adult. Particularly so in that it satirizes with equal deftness the Innocents and the Sophisticates. (Also, I recently recommended Les Liaisons Dangereuses to a friend. He'd been trying to get a date with a girl, but she'd turned him down flat. After reading the book, and with renewed insight, he wrote her a Valmontian letter. By return of post, he got the date.) (Also, also, without this book, I doubt whether we'd ever have had Being John Malkovich. Malkovich owes at least half his cool to Laclos.)