Gustave Flaubert
The three works in this book are each strikingly different. Death, Satan and Nero (the fifth Roman emperor) converse in a prose poem; a Medieval saint encounters trial and struggle before attaining divinity; the life of a selfless maid in 19th-century France shows the horror of true altruism.
Gustave Flaubert spent his life working on and revising the book he considered his greatest work, before releasing this final version in 1874. Written in a play script form, The Temptation of Saint Anthony describes one night in Anthony the Great's life, in which he is faced with temptation from the supernatural in the desert of Egypt.
In this satirical novel from renowned French author Gustave Flaubert, two Paris-dwelling clerks, François Bouvard and Juste Pécuchet, have a chance encounter one day and instantly become the best of friends. When Bouvard comes into some family money, the two chums decide to pull up stakes and move to the country to pursue a life of intellectual inquiry. But after plowing through much of the world's literature, poetry, and scientific
...4) Salammbo
With his masterwork Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert blazed new trails in literary realism with a gripping tale of a disenchanted wife entangled in an extramarital affair. After that, Flaubert took a completely different tack and dove into the extensive historical research that would form the basis of the novel Salammbo, an action-packed account of the series of wars that devastated Carthage in the 3rd century BC.
5) Herodias
In this gripping novella, French literary master Gustave Flaubert revisits one of the most dramatic events of the Bible and presents his own imaginative spin on the tale. The Herodias of the story's title is a princess who has concocted a devious plan to compel her husband to fall in love with her young daughter from a previous union, Salome. Once Salome has won his heart, Herodias instructs her to request the execution of John the Baptist.
Madame Bovary became notorious and a bestseller after Gustave Flaubert was acquitted from charges of obscenity in 1856. It details the many adulterous affairs and extravagances of Emma Bovary, a provincial doctor's wife. Her behaviour explores the banality and emptiness of rural life.
Flaubert considered himself a perfectionist, which is mirrored in the immaculate style of his writing. Madame Bovary is still considered one of the
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