Grey turns gold - 50 Shades of ambiguity

THE soft-porn novel Fifty Shades of Grey has become a publishing if not a literary sensation of our time.

The fantasy, largely based on bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism, has sold 125m copies around the world and has been translated into 52 languages. It has made a multimillionaire out of its creator, EL James.

Irish readers have made what seems a disproportionate contribution to those staggering sales figures by buying 500,000 copies of the book.