Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (French pronunciation: ​[pjɛʁ ɑ̃brwaːz ʃɔdɛʁlo də laklo]; 18 October 1741 – 5 September 1803) was a French novelist, official, freemason and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) (1782).A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade or Nicolas-Edme Rétif.