Le Diable au corps (The Devil in the Flesh) is an early 1923 novel by Parisian literary prodigy Raymond Radiguet. The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through World War I. Though Radiguet denied it, it was established later that the story was in large part autobiographical. Critics, who initially despised the intense publicity campaign for the book's release (something not normally associated with works of literary merit at the time) were finally won over by the quality of Radiguet's writing and his sober, objective style. Le Diable au Corps is also the title of one of two operettas, and of five operas, composed by Italian composer Romualdo Marenco in 1884. It has been adapted several times for television and the screen.