The Sofa: A Moral Tale

The novel is structured as a frame story in an oriental setting, explicitly evocative of the Arabian Nights, in which Amanzéï recounts the adventures of seven couples, which he witnessed in his sofa form, to the bored sultan Shah Baham (grandson of Shehryār and Scheherazade).

Many of the characters in the novel are satirical portraits of influential and powerful Parisians of Crébillon's time; the author takes the opportunity to ridicule hypocrisy in its different forms (worldly respectability, virtue, religious devotion).

Although the book was published anonymously and with a false imprint, Crébillon was discovered to be the author and was exiled to a distance of thirty leagues from Paris on April 7, 1742.

Le Sopha was translated into English by Haywood and Hatchett in 1742, by Bonamy Dobrée in 1927, and by Martin Kamin in 1930 (as The Divan: A Morality Story).

Le Sopha is visible as the title of a book in The Toilette, one of William Hogarth's series of satirical paintings Marriage à-la-mode, made 1743–1745.