"'The sweetness of her glance - or rather, my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin - did not allow me to hesitate for a moment...'" "So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tal…
Guy de Maupassant's scandalous tale of an opportunistic young man corrupted by the allure of power, "Bel-Ami" is translated with an introduction by Douglas Parmee in "Penguin Classics". Young, attract…
Au soir de sa vie, un vieux professeur se souvient de l'aventure qui, plus que les honneurs et la réussite de sa carrière, a marqué sa vie. A dix-neuf ans, il a été fasciné par la personnalité d'un de…
Pierre, médecin, ne comprend pas pourquoi un ami de sa famille a légué sa fortune à Jean, son frère cadet. Au terme d'une véritable enquête policière, il mettra au jour un terrible secret. Le quatrièm…
The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and st…
Finance, fashionable society, and the intrigues of the underworld and the police system form the heart of this powerful novel, which introduces the satanic genius Vautrin, one of the greatest villains…
With a title translated either as Against Nature or as Against The Grain, this wildly original fin-de-siècle novel follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats…
One of the greatest love stories of all time, this novel has fascinated generations of readers. Dumas's subtle and moving portrait of a woman in love is based on his own love affair with one of the mo…
Jacques the Fatalist is Diderot's answer to the problem of existence. If human beings are determined by their genes and their environment, how can they claim to be free to want or do anything? Where a…
Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. When the…
Jeanne, ayant fini ses malles, s'approcha de la fenêtre, mais la pluie ne cessait pas. L'averse, toute la nuit, avait sonné contre les carreaux et les toits. Le ciel bas et chargé d'eau semblait crevé,…
Before succumbing to the insanity that ravaged his later life, Guy de Maupassant established a reputation as France's preeminent short story writer, an artist whose cynical and macabre visions paralle…
Le fils retourne dans sa famille pour l'informer de sa mort prochaine. Ce sont les retrouvailles avec le cercle familial où l'on se dit l'amour que l'on se porte à travers les éternelles querelles. De…
This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Ba…
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar transla…
Based on Flaubert’s own youthful passion for an older woman, Sentimental Education was described by its author as “the moral history of the men of my generation.” It follows the amorous adventures of …
