Book description
Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his
friends as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise
and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face
to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives -
the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers -
and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social
climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when
Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great
frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of
life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque
with wit, sensitivity and humanity.
Guy de Maupassant was born in Normandy in 1850. By the late 1870s,
the first signs of syphilis had appeared, and Maupassant had become
Flaubert's pupil in the art of prose. He led a hectic social life, and
in 1891, having tried to commit suicide, he was committed to an asylum
in Paris, where he died two years later.
Douglas Parmee is a well-known French translator.
