A Love Crime

A Love Crime is the English translation of Un crime d’amour, the 1886 novel by Paul Bourget (1852-1935), the French psychological novelist of the fin de siècle. The novel examines a Parisian love affair as a moral crime: the jaded man of the world Armand de Querne seduces Hélène Chazel, the wife of his devoted and trusting friend, out of vanity and emptiness rather than passion, and the book traces the destruction his cold experiment works on the woman who genuinely loves him and on his own remnant of conscience. Bourget’s analytic dissection of motive, his Parisian salon setting, and his moral seriousness about the consequences of seduction define the psychological novel he championed. The book belongs to the sequence of 1880s novels that made his European reputation. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.