This classic (1870) Venus in Furs should of course not be missing from the bookcase of a slave.
Overwrought with love, the fanatical Severin von Kusiemski unconditionally surrenders himself to his classical ideal, Venus, personified in the imperious Wanda von Dunajew. What follows is a painfully honest literary testimony about the perfect submission, which turns into slavery, and which is doomed from the beginning to end in betrayal.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch exposes the slavishly constructed psyche with surgical precision and, albeit unintentionally, has even passed on his surname to this sexual entity, masochism. Venus in Furs unleashed a major scandal in the media at the time, because of its extravagant erotic theme, and is still regarded as the essence of fetishistic literature today.
