Flaubert: a life - Hardcover

WALL, Geoffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571195210 ISBN 13: 9780571195213

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2001

Synopsis

The life and times of the great French novelist

A blond giant of a man with green eyes and a resonant actor's voice, Gustave Flaubert, perhaps the finest French writer of the nineteenth century, lived quietly in the provinces with his widowed mother, composing his incomparable novels at a rate of five words an hour. He detested his respectable neighbors, and they, in turn, helped to ensure his infamy as a writer of immoral books. Geoffrey Wall's remarkable new biography weaves together the inner dramas of Flaubert's provincial life with the social intrigues of his regular escapes to Paris, where he became a friend to Turgenev and was praised by the emperor, and the flamboyant excitements of his travels throughout the Mediterranean, on which he kept company with courtesans, acrobats, gypsies, and simpletons.

Flaubert's contradictory experiences nurtured his peerless novels and stories, and Wall's dynamic interpretation of them gives us a new understanding of his sometimes pitiable, always unforgettable characters: an Egyptian hermit tormented by voluptuous visions, a melancholy doctor's wife eating arsenic to escape debt and despair, an old country woman who worships a stuffed parrot.

Wall's is the first full-fledged modern biography of this immeasurably talented and influential artist. Flaubert brilliantly re-creates the life and times of a writer who wrote to within an inch of his life and whose importance will never diminish.

About this title

About the Author:

Geoffrey Wall, who teaches at the University of York, is the translator of Madame Bovary and other works of Flaubert for Penguin Classics. This is his first book.

From AudioFile:

Gustav Flaubert was one of France's greatest writers. Best-known for his first novel, MADAME BOVARY, Flaubert was a great stylist and a literary perfectionist. As is the case with many nineteenth-century authors, his life tells us a lot about his times. John Lee's avuncular tone fits well in this fireside-type reading of Flaubert's life story. Lee sounds interested in the details and keeps the listener interested as well. His pronunciation of French names won't distract those who speak the language but won't confuse listeners unfamiliar with French. Anyone interested in French literature, or the nineteenth century in general, will find this an enlightening listen. K.M. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0571195210
• ISBN 13: 9780571195213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416