18 books like Bel-Ami
Histoire d'un casse-noisette
A little girl's devotion to her Christmas nutcracker is instrumental in breaking a spell imposed upon the nutcracker-prince by his enemies, the mice.
Shares: Translations from French, French fiction
Paul et Virginie
Paul and Virginia, two fatherless children are brought up in poverty and innocence, amid the tropical scenery of the island of Mauritius. Virginia is recalled to France by a harsh and wealthy aunt. There she is miserable, and after two years returns to the island. But her ship is wrecked and she is drowned before the eyes of Paul.
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À rebours
À rebours (French pronunciation: [a ʁ(ə).buʁ]; translated Against Nature or Against the Grain) is an 1884 novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. The narrative centers on a single character: Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive, ailing aesthete. The last scion of an aristocratic family, Des Esseintes loathes nineteenth-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal…
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Notre Dame de Paris
In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.
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Les belles images
"Non ; elle a crié tout haut. Pas Catherine. Je ne permettrai pas qu'on lui fasse ce qu'on m'a fait. Qu'a-t-on fait de moi ? Cette femme qui n'aime personne, insensible aux beautés du monde, incapable même de pleurer, cette femme que je vomis. Catherine : au contraire lui ouvrir les yeux tout de suite et peut-être un rayon de lumière filtrera jusqu'à elle, peut-être elle s'en sortira... De quoi ?…
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The Plague
From the Publisher: From one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the twentieth century-two novels, six short stories, and a pair of essays in a single volume. In both his essays and his fiction, Albert Camus (1913-1960) deployed his lyric eloquence in defense against despair, providing an affirmation of the brave assertion of humanity in the face of a universe devoid of order or…
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The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was recognized as a landmark of human thought upon its publication in 1776. As the first scientific argument for the principles of political economy, it is the point of departure for all subsequent economic thought. Smith's theories of capital accumulation, growth, and secular change, among others, continue to be influential in modern economics. This reprint of…
Shares: Colonies, Wealth, Politics and government, History
Sous l'acacia d'Occident
In the final novel in the bestselling series, Christian Jacq writes of the Hittite king who wants Ramses to marry his daughter, while revolt is brewing among the revenge-driven Libyans.
Shares: French fiction, French literature, Historical Fiction, History
En route
The plot of the novel is as simple as it could be. I've taken the principal character of Là-Bas, Durtal, had him converted and sent him to a Trappist monastery. In studying his conversion, I've tried to trace the progress of a soul surprised by the gift of grace, and developing in an ecclesiastical atmosphere, to the accompaniment of mystical literature, liturgy, and plainchant, against a…
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Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours
Phileas Fogg, a very punctual man had broken into an argument while conversing about the recent bank robbery. To keep his word of proving that he would travel around the world in 80 days and win the bet, he sets on a long trip, where he is joined by a few other people on the way. A wonderful adventure is about to begin!
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Plays
The text of the present volume was passed for press by Arnold Glover and some progress had been made in his lifetime in the collection of the material given in the Appendix. Mrs. Glover’s help has again been most valuable in the completion of the work. The Elder Brother is printed entirely in prose in the Second Folio, and I have therefore printed in the Appendix the play in verse, as it appeared…
Shares: Colonies, History
Les Misérables
In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.
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Adolphe
Adolphe is a privileged and refined young man, bored by the stupidity he perceives in the world around him. After a number of meaningless conquests, he at last encounters Ellenore, a beautiful and passionate older woman. Adolphe is enraptured and gradually wears down her resistance to his declarations of love. But as they embark on an intense and tortured affair, Ellenore gives way to a flood of…
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Coniston
This book is about a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six presidents had closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras. Certain gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer determination to get on top, arose,—and got on…
Shares: Politics and government, Historical Fiction
La Chute
Num bar de marinheiros em Amesterdão, um homem que se apresenta como juiz-penitente enceta conversa com um desconhecido. Entre copos de Genebra e deambulações pelas ruas daquela cidade de canais concêntricos, a fazer lembrar os círculos do inferno, recorda a sua vida passada como respeitável advogado parisiense, insuperável na defesa de causas nobres e nas conquistas amorosas. Mas à medida que a…
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Works (La chute / L'exil et le royaume)
Shares: French fiction, French literature, Continental european fiction
Shares: French fiction, French literature, Continental european fiction
Les contes drôlatiques
A collection of stories with a mediaeval theme rather after the style of Rabelais. Early editions were illustrated by Gustav Dore and were published by Garnier Freres of Paris. The stories range from the absurd to the downright grim but the illustrations give them a life of their own. Rather off-putting to the reader used to modern French, the stories are written in an archaic French that is not…
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The bravo
Originally published in 1831, this novel is set in Venice in the bygone days of the Doges. It was inspired by Cooper's travels in Italy. The author has intended to give his countrymen, writes Cooper in his preface, "a picture of the social system of the soi-disant republics of the other hemisphere." Cooper aims to show, William Cullen Bryant said, that all systems which reserve power for the…
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