The novel was never completed; it exists mainly in rough draft and note form. Sade wrote it in secrecy while imprisoned in the Bastille in 1785; shortly after he was transferred elsewhere the Bastille was attacked by revolutionaries, leading him to believe the work was destroyed, but it was instead recovered by a mysterious figure and preserved long enough thereafter to become available in the early 20th century. It was not until the latter half of the 20th century that it became more widely available in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and France. Since then, it has been translated into many languages, including English, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, and German. It remains a highly controversial book, having been banned by some governments due to its explicit nature and themes of sexual violence and extreme cruelty, such as in the UK in the 1950s, but remains of significant interest to students and historians. In 2016 an English translation of the work became a Penguin Classic.