Madame Bovary (Collins Classics)

Emma Bovary, married to a dull provincial doctor, measures her life against the romances she has read and finds it unbearably small. Gustave Flaubert follows her attempts to import passion and luxury into a setting built for neither: an affair, then another, then the debts and the ruined reputation that arrive with them. The prose is famously exact, and the satire cuts in two directions at once, at Emma's self-deception and at the provincial society so eager to condemn her. Scandalous enough on publication to provoke prosecution, the novel is now read as a foundation of literary realism. This Collins Classics paperback makes it available in a plain, readable format. What readers get: • A cornerstone of nineteenth-century French realism in English translation • Flaubert's precise, unsparing prose style, studied by novelists ever since • Social satire aimed at provincial hypocrisy as much as at its heroine • Collins Classics paperback, practical for coursework and general reading Recommended for students of literature and readers of European classics, offered by Boipoka.