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…
One of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written, The Devil in the Flesh is set in Paris during the last year of the First World War. The narrator, a boy of sixteen, tells of his love affair…
The Sicilian prince Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (1896-1957) died just after writing The Leopard, his only novel. Visconti's film adaptation, starring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme …
Richard Howard's exuberant and definitive rendition of Stendhal's stirring tale has brought about the rediscovery of this classic by modern readers. Stendhal narrates a young aristocrat's adventures i…
Adolphe is a privileged and refined young man, bored by the stupidity he perceives in the world around him. After a number of meaningless conquests, he at last encounters Ellenore, a beautiful and pas…
Nadja, originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude toward everyday life.
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…
This new translation of The Princesse de Clèves also includes two shorter works also attributed to Mme de Lafayette, The Princesse de Montpensier and The Comtesse de Tende.
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…
