French Realism

Honoré de Balzac Explained: The Human Comedy, Realism, French Society, Literary Ambition, and the Birth of the Modern Novel is a comprehensive and accessible guide to one of the most ambitious writers in literary history. In this in depth exploration, you will discover how Balzac built La Comédie Humaine into a vast interconnected portrait of nineteenth century France, capturing the rise of capitalism, the pressures of social mobility, and the psychological intensity of modern ambition. Whether you are new to Balzac or looking to deepen your understanding, this book provides clear insight...

Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.

For 15 years the weaver Silas Marner has plied his loom near the village of Raveloe, alone and unjustly in exile, cut off from faith and human love, he cares only for his hoard of golden guineas. But two events occur that will change his life forever; his gold disappears and a golden-haired baby girl appears. But where did she come from and who really stole the gold? This moving tale sees Silas eventually redeemed and restored to life by the unlikely means of his love for the orphan child Eppie.

From Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling to Satyajit Ray and R. K. Narayan, this text is a collection of spine-chilling tales of the supernatural from India...

Fille de l'esclave Abena violée par un marin anglais à bord d'un vaisseau négrier, Tituba, née à la Barbade, est initiée aux pouvoirs surnaturels par Man Yaya, guérisseuse et faiseuse de sorts. Son mariage avec John Indien l'entraîne à Boston, puis au village de Salem au service du pasteur Parris. C'est dans l'atmosphère hystérique de cette petite communauté puritaine qu'a lieu le célèbre procès des sorcières de Salem en 1692. Tituba est arrêtée, oubliée dans sa prison jusqu'à l'amnistie générale qui survient deux ans plus tard.

From the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune comes a new delightful novel about exploring all the magical possibilities of life in the most extraordinary city of all: Paris. Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people's fortunes—or misfortunes—in tealeaves. Ever...

Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.

Imaginez : un homme vous sauve la vie, en échange de votre engagement de faire tout ce qu'il vous demande... pour votre bien. Le dos au mur, vous acceptez et vous vous retrouvez embarqué dans une incroyable situation où tout semble vous échapper. Vous n'êtes plus le maître de votre vie.

A talented chef discovers how spices and scents can transport her—and, more importantly, how self-confidence can unlock the greatest magic of all: love—in this perfectly seasoned new novel by Samantha Vérant. Kate Jenkins doesn’t believe in fate. She believes in a clear vision, meticulous...

Love isn’t just a battlefield—it’s a wilderness with no trail markers. Eden never planned to spend a weekend roughing it with her ex-boyfriend, Dax, especially not as co-leaders of a couples’ retreat deep in the backcountry. But a paperwork mishap and a freak storm leave them in the middle of the woods, stranding them with a handful of couples and dwindling supplies. Dax thrives in chaos. Eden craves control. Now they have neither—and they’re forced to navigate each other while guiding strangers through wilderness, survival, twisted confessions, and the reappearance of love ...

"The unknown masterpiece", or "Le chef-d'œuvre inconnu", is a story by the French author Honoré de Balzac. This short text was of tremendous importance in the world of art, for it holds a groundbreaking reflection about artistic creation: what does completion or failure mean, and how is it that technique does not guarantee either. Paul Cézanne famously said "I am Frenhofer", identifying with the old master around which the story revolves. Pablo Picasso himself was absolutely fascinated by the text, so much that he had his studio moved in the Parisian street named in the story; there, he painted his own masterpiece, Guernica.

Guy de Maupassant was an absolute master of the short story genre, delighting in clever plotting, concise style, and efficient storytelling, which he used to produce stunning pieces in a very condensed format. Maupassant specialized in realism, with its sharp criticism of lower human nature and society, and fantastic, although his ventures in the supernatural are often used as an implicit symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds - he was absolutely fascinated with psychiatry, which was nascent at the time.

"Smart, thoughtful, and sensual." —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists A gothic-tinged fever dream that reimagines the young American in France, Salomé follows an adrift journalist who accepts an alluring stranger’s invitation to stay at her home in a small...

Le jour où sa femme disparaît inexplicablement, la vie de Toru Okada bascule – et emporte avec elle les repères du monde. C'est dans une réalité qui s'enfuit sous d'excentriques mirages que le jeune homme s'éveille un matin. Un théâtre d'ombres débutant par de mystérieux coups de téléphone, et où se croisent peu à peu des êtres déroutants, inclassables, aux confins d'un univers guidé par le chant d'un oiseau à ressort.

Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must, a writer of fierce originality and haunting lyricism, turns to the troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children. In the title story, a teenage...

Guy de Maupassant is justly revered as one of the strongest proponents of the short story. The miniature gems he created are woven from the many worlds and strata of society that surrounded him. From feuds and revenge to tales of avarice and friendship de Maupassant is the master of all and second to none.

Dans la lignée du monumental "1Q84", un roman somme, ambitieux, profond. Deux tomes pour une odyssée initiatique étrange, inquiétante, envoûtante, où le maître Murakami dévoile ses obsessions les plus intimes. Quand sa femme lui a annoncé qu'elle voulait divorcer, le narrateur, un jeune peintre en panne d'inspiration, a voyagé seul à travers le Japon. Et puis, il s'est installé dans la montagne dans une maison isolée, ancienne propriété d'un artiste de génie, Tomohiko Amada. Un jour, le narrateur reçoit une proposition alléchante : faire le portrait de Wataru Menshiki, un riche homme d'affaires.

Surtout n'arrêtez jamais de danser... À la suite d'une série de rêves, un journaliste free-lance désabusé part à la recherche d'une ex-petite amie, pourvue des oreilles les plus parfaites que la terre a jamais portées, mystérieusement disparue. Sa quête le mène à l'hôtel du Dauphin de Sapporo, où il va devenir le chaperon d'une adolescente paumée, et recevoir des instructions cryptiques de la part d'un homme-mouton, caché dans une chambre miteuse d'un étage fantôme, dont la principale est de : " continuer à danser ".

In the perfumed hills of 1920s Grasse, Lucien Voss is no ordinary perfumer. He does not create fragrances for the famous houses of Paris. He distills the exact scent of a person’s one true love—before they have ever met.When Claire Delacroix, a young Parisian widow still wearing the quiet colors of grief, steps into his shadowed atelier seeking a signature perfume, Lucien offers her something impossible: a single cobalt-blue bottle that will only reveal its full fragrance when she is already standing in the presence of the man she was always meant to find.What begins as curiosity ...

The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the...