Bel Ami: Amazon.ca: Guy de Maupassant: Books

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Book Description

'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-siecle 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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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First Sentence
When the cashier had handed him the change from his five-franc piece,* Georges Duroy left the restaurant. Read the first page

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Concordance

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars social climbers, Jun 3 2004

By	myshiak (washington, dc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penguin Classics Bel Ami (Paperback)

The novel can make you wonder how the society can be so porous to allow somebody to get from dire poverty to filthy richness. It is important to note that Georges Duroy, unlike Rastignac from Balzac's "Pere Goriot/Old Goriot", was never torn between good and evil and, unlike Julien Sorel from Stendhal's "le Rouge et le Noire/the Red and the Black" never won women's hearts as a plebeian. Georges Duroy may personify the cynical and corrupt society, however his success would not have been possible without the society, in spite of all its vises, being so sensuous (especially the female part of it).

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4.0 out of 5 stars Sleaze, Manipulation, Mediocrity, Mar 29 2004

By	I ain't no porn writer (author, "Crippled Dreams") - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penguin Classics Bel Ami (Paperback)

This is a story of how sleaze, manipulation, and mediocrity prevail and get certain people ahead in life.

Georges Duroy is one of those incompetent losers who gets others to do his work for him and sleeps his way to the top, basically. This story is an expose of the corrupt and unscrupulous aspects of the newspaper publishing world and the immoral seductions of Parisian high society.

Duroy begins in the poverty and squalor of a worker's tenement building where he's struggling to make a living. Through sheer determination to change his situation and make something of his life, he moves to Paris and soon finds himself in the artistic salon of a wealthy and intelligent political hostess and the home of a rich Jewish banker and newspaper owner. Here Maupassant skillfully shows how a mediocre, untalented nobody becomes really successful in life through cunning, through good luck... and good connections!

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

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1.0 out of 5 stars rien ne se traduit! il faut apprendre le fran�ais, Feb 23 2004

By	Polyglot (cambridge, ma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penguin Classics Bel Ami (Paperback)

je ne peux pas comprendre les gens qui lisent la litt�rature fran�aise en anglais. d'abord, rien ne se traduit (tradurre e' tradire). deuxi�mement, en lisant, par exemple, "Fauxpassant" vous devenez l'esclave totale du traducteur. ce que vous lisez correspondre non pas � ce qu'a �crit Maupassant, mais aux id�es plates d'un traducteur qui ne sait m�me pas comment �crire! (c'est pour cela, n'est-ce pas, qu'il travaille comme traducteur...)

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous Story on 19th Century French Society
Guy De Maupassant (1850-1893), if "Bel-Ami" is any indication, must rank as one of the best writers in the history of the western world. Read more

Published on May 26 2003 by Jeffrey Leach

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly 'modern' classic
Maupassant's characters are more real and colourful than those created by any of the other French naturalists. Bel Ami, his first fill length novel, is simply a joy to read. Read more

Published on Jun 12 2001 by Stephen Mackintosh

5.0 out of 5 stars right up there with Madame Bovary
I would never have known that Guy de Maupassant wrote novels along with his great short stories if another amazon reader hadn't turned me on to their existence. Read more

Published on Dec 9 2000 by M. H. Bayliss

5.0 out of 5 stars French Tickler
We can always learn something from the French, and this novel of one journalist's rise in 1880s Paris is full of little 'life lessons' about the way of the World and how to turn... Read more

Published on Nov 22 2000 by Captain Cook