The Obedient Husband and Other Amusing Stories

The collection includes satirical and humorous stories dedicated to human weaknesses, family relationships, marriage, and unexpected life situations. The author ironically shows how the desire to please others, maintain a reputation, or gain advantages often leads the characters to comical, and sometimes instructive, consequences.

The title story tells of a husband who tries to satisfy his wife's every wish, hoping to maintain peace in the family; however, excessive compliance gradually leads to absurd and funny situations. In other stories in the collection, the characters encounter romantic misunderstandings, social conventions, cunning tricks, and quirks of everyday life.

The works are united by light humor, observance, and subtle satire on human habits and social norms.

Scandalous views and uncompromising judgments expressed by Marquis Donatien Alphonse de Sade against all "cold and boring moralists" often overshadowed the numerous merits of his prose, but in the short and humorous stories included in this edition, it is the exquisite style, refined humor, and vivid and sparkling expressions that take center stage.

For his views, the Marquis spent more than thirty years of his life in prisons and asylums; his books were banned and destroyed, and some works were published more than a hundred years after de Sade's death. Thus, "Amusing Stories" only saw the light for the first time in 1926 — and since then it has rightfully taken its place among the outstanding examples of 18th-century French literature.