The fan-maker's inquisition

"Picture a dramatic courtroom scene: during the French Revolution a fan-maker is on trial because of a manuscript seized in her rooms, and because of her friendship with the Marquis de Sade, the notorious author of Justine, who has already been condemned and imprisoned by the same court for his sexual transgressions. Not only has she made exquisite and sexually provocative fans for her friend, but she has also coauthored with the marquis a book accusing Bishop Landa, the infamous Spanish inquisitor, of massacres and other hideous abuses against the native population of the New World. The men of the court are so consumed with punishing the authors of this scandalous book that they are blind to the folly of their own accusations."--BOOK JACKET. "The Fan-Maker's Inquisition is a novel about books and the reveries that engender them, about the intrinsic necessity of the sovereign imagination, and about the risks of passionate living and thinking."--BOOK JACKET.