Boule de Suif
By (Author) Andrew Brown
By (author) Guy de Maupassant
Alma Books Ltd
Alma Classics
1st October 2018
26th July 2018
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Fiction in translation
Short stories
843.8
Paperback
128
Width 128mm, Height 198mm
127g
A carriage transporting ten passengers fleeing from Rouen is stopped at a village inn by Prussian soldiers, who decide to detain them until one of their party, the prostitute Boule de Suif, consents to sleep with their officer. When Boule de Suif refuses to do so on account of her principles and patriotic sentiments, the solidarity initially manifested by her fellow travellers becomes increasingly tested as the deadlock continues, and the strained relationship between her and her respectable counterparts gradually worsens. A scathing satire of bourgeois prejudice and hypocrisy and a compelling snapshot of France during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Boule de Suif here presented with five other major stories by the author of Bel Ami was declared a masterpiece by Flaubert and is widely considered to be Maupassants finest short story.
An exceedingly sharp satire of flexible French morals among different classes during the nineteenth-century German occupation. * The Guardian *
One of the leading figures of the French Naturalist movement, Guy de Maupassant (185093), while also celebrated for his novels, is considered one of the finest ever writers of short stories.