In 1928, when The Suffering of Prince Sternengoch was first published, members of the Czech founders' union refused to subscribe to the Pleiades book series, in which this book was published, because "they do not buy pornography for a beautiful cover." Ladislav Klima himself said that his novel "is 10 times more realistic and disgusting than Zola, 10 times more fantastic than Hoffmann, 10 times more obscene than Casanova than Baudelaire, in short - immorality, hooliganism and madness..."