Bel-ami

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Bel-ami
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Guy Maupassant
Translated by Douglas Parmee
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:416
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreClassic fiction (pre c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9780140443158
ClassificationsDewey:843.8
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 28 August 1975
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his friends as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity and humanity.

Author Biography

Guy de Maupassant was born in Normandy in 1850. By the late 1870s, the first signs of syphilis had appeared, and Maupassant had become Flaubert's pupil in the art of prose. He led a hectic social life, and in 1891, having tried to commit suicide, he was committed to an asylum in Paris, where he died two years later. Douglas Parmee is a well-known French translator.