Olejar Books

The perfect master of a difficult art, he dissects the timeless moods of human nature with a clear-eyed pessimism which reduces the whole of existence to a heap of vanities. He wrote almost 300 stories and they remain as fresh and entertaining today as they were when they first appeared a century ago. His ability to provoke, amuse, and chill spans the whole range of human experience from low farce to high tragedy. He wrote Tyrically of nature, astringently about people, and unblinkingly about the absurdity of the Human condition.

This selection of twenty-seven stories in a lively new translation by David Coward 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 which is all the more chilling for having strange parallels with its author's own descent into madness. All are touched by Maupassant's genius for invention and amply justify his place of greatness in the history of world literature.