Bel Ami

The handsome, unscrupulous Georges Duroy claws his way up through the newspapers and salons of Paris by seducing a series of influential women, discarding each as he climbs toward wealth and power. Maupassant’s brilliant, cynical masterpiece is a savage satire of ambition, journalism, and a society for sale, its charming anti-hero rising precisely because he has no scruples. Sharp, worldly, and unsparing, Bel-Ami exposes the corruption beneath the glamour of the Belle Époque. A dazzling study of a handsome cad’s triumphant immorality, it stands among the great French novels of ambition and remains startlingly relevant in its portrait of media, money, and the ruthless pursuit of success.