Hard-Core Romance

»Fifty Shades of Grey«, Best-Sellers, and Society
Literal translation of original German title: The New Love Order. Women, Men, and Shades of Grey
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Chicago UP), Spanish world rights (Katz), France (Seuil), Italy (Mimesis), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Poland (PWN)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Korea (Dolbegae), Croatia (Planetopija)


Hard-Core Romance / Die neue Liebesordnung
»Fifty Shades of Grey«, Best-Sellers, and Society
Literal translation of original German title: The New Love Order. Women, Men, and Shades of Grey
#8 Influential Women in Sociology From the Last 10 Years (Academic Influence)
E.L. James’s BDSM Fifty Shades trilogy was an enormous success worldwide, particularly with women. But why? Because of the allegedly pornographic content? Because it was backed by a cleverly formulated marketing strategy?

Underlying Eva Illouz’s reading of the trilogy is her thesis that some books become bestsellers because they simultaneously demonstrate and solve an existing and prevalent socio-cultural problem. For Illouz,...
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E.L. James’s BDSM Fifty Shades trilogy was an enormous success worldwide, particularly with women. But why? Because of the allegedly pornographic content? Because it was backed by a cleverly formulated marketing strategy?

Underlying Eva Illouz’s reading of the trilogy is her thesis that some books become bestsellers because they simultaneously demonstrate and solve an existing and prevalent socio-cultural problem. For Illouz, Fifty Shades of Grey is neither »mommy-porn« nor an anti-feminist creation, but instead it functions as a well-made guidebook that shows how the paradoxes of a contemporary heterosexual love affair may be practically overcome.

»A reasoned, thoughtful examination of gender relations, women’s desires, and the role of passion in contemporary society. […] Vital and interesting.« Los Angeles Review of Books

»When Hard-Core Romance came out in Germany in 2011, this analysis of the ›modern romantic experience‹ sold tens of thousands of copies. One assumes at first that this must have been due to the subject, the title and the candy pink cover of the German edition […] But whoever reads this work will recognize the seriousness of its analysis and its refusal to pander.« Le Monde

»Illouz rightly tags the trilogy a species of self-help.« New Republic

»Compellingly audacious.« Times Higher Education

»A provocative text in its own right, Hard-Core Romance inventively employs the much-maligned Fifty Shades of a Grey to stage a philosophical and sociological conversation about relationship between fantasy, romance, sexuality, and popular literature. In a modern era where competing desires for autonomy and attachment in sexual relationships are lived realities but seldom theorized, Illouz bravely takes on the novel’s controversial sexual practices, finding in them a meditation on the anxieties and compromises that characterize heterosexual intimacy. This generous and original reading offers the tantalizing prospect that it will unveil the uncertainties and indeterminacies that inhere in the heterosexual compact—a promise that Hard-Core Romance masterfully delivers.« Suzanne Leonard, author of Fatal Attraction

»Hard-Core Romance is a wonderfully creative piece of cultural analysis. Writing from a feminist-sociological perspective, Eva Illouz tells us how Fifty Shades of Grey became an international bestseller by providing fantasy resolutions to real-life female dilemmas, and self-help for the douleurs of contemporary heterosexuality. A most timely intervention.« Laura Kipnis, author of How to Become a Scandal

»[T]he first serious, book-length academic analysis of the Fifty Shades of Grey The Millions

»A reasoned, thoughtful examination of gender relations, women’s desires, and the role of passion in contemporary society. […] Vital and interesting.« Los Angeles Review of Books

»When Hard-Core Romance came out in Germany in 2011, this analysis of the ›modern romantic experience‹ sold tens of thousands of copies. One assumes at first that this must have been due to the subject, the title and the candy pink cover of...

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2013, 88 pages
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Nachricht
Eva Illouz has been awarded for her contributions to our understanding of the present.
Nachricht
Eva Illouz has been awarded for her contributions to our understanding of the present.

DISCOVER

Nachricht
Eva Illouz has been awarded for her contributions to our understanding of the present.

Persons

Eva Illouz, born in Morocco in 1961, is Directrice d’Etudes at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, CESSP-EHESS in Paris. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Annaliese Meier International Award for Excellence in Research and the E.M.E.T Award for Social Sciences, the highest scientific distinction in Israel. In 2022, Academic Influence listed her among the Influential Women in Sociology From the Last 10 Years (#8).
Eva Illouz, born in Morocco in 1961, is Directrice d’Etudes at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, CESSP-EHESS in...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Explosive Modernity
Year of Publication: 2024
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2024
In her new book, sociologist Eva Illouz takes a look at our highly charged present from the perspective of the emotions that forge it. Envy and rage, jealousy and shame, disappointment and love are...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Katz), Chinese simplex (Shanghai Insight Media), Arabic world rights (Page Seven), France (Gallimard), Italy (Einaudi), Netherlands (Ten Have), Korea (Cheongmi)

The Emotional Life of Populism
Year of Publication: 2023
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2023

Throughout the world, democracy is under assault by various populist movements and ideologies. And throughout the world, the same enigma: why is it that political figures or governments, who have...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Katz), Arabic world rights (Page Seven), France (Premier Parallèle), Italy (Castelvecchi), Sweden (Daidalos), Turkey (Lejand), Israel (Van Leer Institute), Korea (Cheongmi)

What is Sexual Capital?
Year of Publication: 2021
Dana Kaplan, Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2021

It is not nature that determines our ideas about sexuality, but society. Whereas it was religion that regulated sex in the past, today it is the economy. No wonder, then, that »sexual«...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Chinese simplex rights (Ginkgo (Shanghai) Book Co. / Post Wave), France (Seuil), Sweden (Daidalos), Korea (HanulPlus), Greece (Ekdoseis tou Eikostou Protou)

Spanish edition available through Herder, Italian edition available through Castelvecchi

 

The End of Love
Year of Publication: 2018
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2018

Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people's lives – the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined to us, the feverish waiting for...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Katz), Catalan (Tigre de Paper), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Insight Media), Chinese complex rights (Linking), Russia (Directmedia), Arabic world rights (Page Seven), France (Seuil), Italy (Codice), Netherlands (Ten Have), Sweden (Daidalos), Korea (Dolbegae), Greece (Ekdoseis tou Eikostou Protou), Israel (Modan)

Is it possible to be a Jewish Intellectual?
Year of Publication: 2015
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2015

What is happening in a country where security is of such importance that a female physician is willing to take part in a conspiracy to commit murder because she is convinced that in doing so she...

Rights sold to:

Sweden (Daidalos)

Why Love Hurts
Year of Publication: 2011
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2011
After the great success of Consuming the Romantic Utopia, Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul, Eva Illouz’ Why Love Hurts is yet another great...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Katz), Chinese simplex rights (East China Normal UP), Russia (Directmedia), Arabic world rights (Page Seven), France (Seuil; French audio book: Audiolib), Italy (Il Mulino), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Sweden (Daidalos), Korea (Dolbegae), Japan (Fukumura Shuppan), Poland (Krytyka Polityczna), Turkey (Zen), Greece (Ekdoseis tou Eikostou Protou), Israel (Keter)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese complex rights (Linking), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Zahar), Romania (Art), Serbia (Psihopolis Institut)

Cold Intimacies
Year of Publication: 2006
Eva IllouzYear of Publication: 2006
This book dispels some conventionally received ideas: namely, that capitalism has created an a-emotional world dominated by bureaucratic rationality; that economic behaviour conflicts with...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Katz), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Insight Media), Arabic world rights (Page Seven), France (Seuil), Italy (Feltrinelli), Korea (Dolbegae), Japan (Kong Shuppan), Poland (Oficyna Naukowa), Slovenia (Krtina), Turkey (Iletisim), Greece (Oposito), Israel (Hakkibutz Hamecheud)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Brazilian Portuguese rights (Jorge Zahar), Croatia (Planetopija)


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07.03.2023
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