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The Indiscreet Jewels

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1748
Pages: 221

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About this book

Denis Diderot's first novel, published anonymously in 1748, is a bawdy Oriental fantasy with a sharp satirical edge. The bored Sultan Mangogul of a thinly disguised France is given a magic ring that forces women to confess their sexual histories, not from their lips but from their 'jewels.' What begins as a smutty court amusement becomes Diderot's cover for mocking the hypocrisy, vanity, and gossip of Louis XV's Versailles, with jabs at contemporary science, philosophy, and opera folded in. Diderot later dismissed the book as a youthful indiscretion, yet its wit and its contempt for official morality already point toward the freethinker he would become.

About the author

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French writer and philosopher, also an art critic, associated with Enlightenment philosophy and materialism. He worked as a novelist, essayist and playwright, and he co-founded and edited an encyclopedia together with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Among his titles is "The Indiscreet Jewels".

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