Bel Ami (The History of a Scoundrel): The story chronicles journalist Georges Duroy's corrupt rise to power from a poor ex-NCO to one of the most successful men in Paris, most of which he achieves by manipulating a series of powerful, intelligent, and wealthy mistresses. The novel is set in Paris in the upper-middle class environment of the leading journalists of the newspaper La Vie Française and their friends. Pierre et Jean - is a naturalist or psycho-realist story, notably so by the subjects on which it treats, including knowledge of one's heredity (whether one is a legitimate son or a bastard), the bourgeoisie, and the problems stemming from money. Notre Coeur (A Woman's Pastime): The novel tells the story of a woman without a heart, frigid and probably a lesbian. The hero, facing this fascinating and awesome being, takes another mistress, who can hardly satisfy him. He is devastated by this passionate love, violent, melancholic and cruel. A Life is a satirical novel about the folly of romantic illusion. The novel tells the story of young Jeanne, full of hope and dreams of love, who discovers the outside world after finishing an education in a convent. She is looking forward to her new life and she is dreaming of the day when she will find the man who loves her. All her expectations are fulfilled, however… Mont Oriol Strong as Death. Guy de Maupassant was a French writer, remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the naturalist school of writers.

This selection of twenty-seven stories shows Maupassant at his comic, cruel, and brilliant best. In addition to the poignant title story, it includes one of the most famous tales ever written, The Necklace , and Le Horla, an account of a disintegrating personality that chillingly parallels the author's own decline into madness. All the stories demonstrate his genius for invention and his ability to write unblinkingly about the absurdity of the human condition, supporting Henry James' claim that in the annals of story-telling, Maupassant stands `like a lion in the path'. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"We fancied each other and that's that. Now it's over." Georges Duroy (the protagonist of

Bringing together six of Turgenev's best known stories in one volume, this collection includes "First Love," "Asya," "Mumu," "The Diary of a Superfluous Man," "Song of Triumphant Love," and "King Lear of the Steppes."

'His rise testifies to the decline of a whole society.' Jean-Paul Sartre Maupassant's second novel, Bel-Ami (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened 'Bel-Ami' by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-siècle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society uncomfortably close to our own and is a devastating satire of the sleaziness of contemporary journalism. Bel-Ami enjoys the status of an authentic record of the apotheosis of bourgeois capitalism under the Third Republic. But the creative tension between its analysis of modern behaviour and its identifiably late nineteenth-century fabric is one of the reasons why Bel-Ami remains one of the finest French novels of its time, as well as being recognized as Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.