The Short Fiction of Guy De Maupassant

Across roughly a decade Maupassant wrote some of the most admired short stories in any language, and this generous selection shows why. His range runs from the Norman farmland of his childhood to the clerks and cafes of Paris, from the humiliations of the Franco-Prussian War to the creeping dread of ‘The Horla.’ He writes without sentiment, building each tale toward a hard, clear turn that leaves the reader with more than the plot first promised. Cruelty, desire, pride, and self-deception move his characters, and he judges none of them. A student of Flaubert, he made the short story a serious form. This free PDF and EPUB edition gathers a wide range of his work in fresh translation.