By Eva Illouz via Spiegel Online International

Since its release last year, the erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" has become a global best-seller. Its success has spawned a debate over whether sadomasochism is demeaning or liberating for women. In an essay for SPIEGEL ONLINE, award-winning sociologist Eva Illouz argues that the book describes an antidote to modern relationships.

Have you ever had sadomasochistic fantasies? If you are like me, not only have you never had any, but you even view sadomasochism as an exotic and very distant land. Assuming that most people are boringly similar to me, then it is a puzzle how "Fifty Shades of Grey" -- a romance novel in which BDSM (short for Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism) is the central plot motif -- became a phenomenal global success.

Many commentators have too easily solved the puzzle by calling it a result of and testimony to a mainstreaming of porn culture. What was previously hidden in the stash of magazines under the bed, and now hidden in the private browsers of Internet sites, has become legitimate. But soft-porn literature has been around for a long time, too, and the range of sexually unconventional behaviors is wide. So that justification does not explain why this particular novel, with a BDSM relationship at its center, has garnered such uncanny success. The "Fifty Shades" trilogy has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, and its rights have been bought in 37 countries, including Germany, where it was published in translation in June. It is flying off the shelves faster than the "Harry Potter" books.

Unsurprisingly, the book has elicited fierce feminist controversies in the United Kingdom and the United States regarding the question of whether submissiveness is a violent or emancipating fantasy for women. But, as a cultural sociologist, I suggest that, before we engage in a discussion about the politics of the book, we should try to understand why it provides pleasure -- of the symbolic rather than sexual variety.

Best-sellers are always a puzzle. Most of the time, no one predicts their success; and yet, once they do succeed, it is as if their success was inevitable. How can we now explain that the new worldwide best-seller "Fifty Shades of Grey" not only succeeded, but did so despite its mind-boggling flaws as a piece of literature?

Head Over to Spiegel Online International for the rest of the article.