Charles Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs du…
Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories, and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our t…
'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace…
Besides writing fiction and personal essays, Hervé Guibert devoted his tragically brief life to the understanding of photography and the elusive nature of images recorded by the camera. To this gifted…
"Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat." Tout langage stéréotypé devient aberrant. C'est ce que Ionesco démontre dans Rhinocéros, pièce qui a tout d'abord vu le jou…
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…
Ange en quête d'absolu ? Monstre sanguinaire ? Avant la guerre, Albert Camus conçoit Caligula, ainsi que Sisyphe ou Meursault (L'Étranger), comme un héros…
Harpagon est un vieillard odieux et avare. Avare jusqu'au ridicule, puisqu'il fait comparaître en justice le chat d'un de ses voisins pour lui avoir mangé le reste d'un gigot ! Avare jusqu'au sordide …
