18 books like Les contes drôlatiques
L'exil et le royaume
"[Exile and the kingdom] consists of six "short stories". The term must be as loosely applied as was that of "novel" to last year's The Fall. The tales, precise, almost stark, are concerned with illuminating the dispossessed- symbolically projected in the exile of man. Two, "The Adulterous Woman" and "The Renegade" take the deserts for their scenes; its barrenness brings revelation to Janine,…
Shares: French Short stories, Littérature française, French literature, Continental european fiction
La lenteur
After the gravity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, Slowness comes as a surprise: it is certainly Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, with, as the author himself says, "not a single serious word in it"; then, too, it is the first of his novels to have been written in French (in the eyes of the French public, turning him definitively into a "French…
Shares: France in fiction, Continental european fiction, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
Short stories
This is a works of the short stories by Guy de Maupassant.
The Diamond Necklace 
The Diary of a Madman 
Farewell
The False Gems
The Gamekeeper
The Horla 
The Inn
In the Moonlight
The Mad Woman
The Marquis de Fumerol
The Moribund
The Piece of String
The Story of a Farm Girl
Theodule Sabot's Confession
The Trip of the Horla
Useless Beauty
"Who Knows?"
The Wolf
The Wreck
The Wrong…
Shares: French Short stories, French literature, Continental european fiction, Manners and customs
Nouvelles orientales
"Avec ces Nouvelles, écrites au cours des dix années qui ont précédé la guerre, la tentation de l’Orient est clairement avouée dans le décor, dans le style, dans l’esprit des textes. De la Chine à la Grèce, des Balkans au Japon, ces contes accompagnent le voyageur comme autant de clés pour une seule musique, venue d’ailleurs. Les surprenants sortilèges du peintre Wang-Fô, qui "aimait l’image des…
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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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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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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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White Nights
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a poignant short story about love, loneliness, and fleeting human connections. Set in St. Petersburg during the ethereal "white nights" of summer, it follows a dreamy, solitary narrator who meets a young woman named Nastenka. Over four nights, he shares his fantasies and feelings, while she confides her longing for a lost lover.
As the narrator falls in love…
Shares: Continental european fiction, Manners and customs, Social life and customs, Short Stories
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: Romance literature, French fiction, French literature, Continental european fiction
Shares: Romance literature, French fiction, French literature, Continental european fiction
No Thoroughfare
No Thoroughfare is a stage play and novel by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both released in December 1867.
Shares: Mœurs et coutumes, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
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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El Aleph
In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand". As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized…
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Směšné lásky
"In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road - only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don…
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![Cover of The complete works of O. Henry [pseud.]](/covers/9566966.jpg)
The complete works of O. Henry [pseud.]
The FICTION & PROSE LITERATURE collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. The collection provides readers with a perspective of the world from some of the 18th and 19th century’s most talented writers. Written for a range of audiences, these works are a treasure for any curious reader looking to see the world through the eyes of ages past. Beyond the main body of…
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Consuming autobiographies
"Since 1975, French literary writing has been marked by an autobiographical turn which has seen authors increasingly often tap into the vein of what the French term ecriture de soi. This coincides, paradoxically, with the 'death of autobiography', as these authors self-consciously distance themselves and their writings from conventional autobiography, founding a 'nouvelle autobiographie'…
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Bel-Ami
.I Quand la caissiere lui eut rendu la monnaie de sa piece de cent sous, Georges Duroy sortit du restaurant. Comme il portait beau, par nature et par pose d'ancien sous-officier, il cambra sa taille, frisa sa moustache d'un geste militaire et familier, et jeta sur les dineurs attardes un regard rapide et circulaire, un de ces regards de joli garcon qui s'etendent comme des coups d'epervier. Les…
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The troll garden
"This collection of Willa Cather stories - her first book of fiction and the capstone of her early career - is as relevant today as at the time of its initial publication. As different and individually distinguished as the seven stories may be, they share as their subject the role and status of the artist in American society.
The passions, ambitions, and pretensions, the cant and the pathos of…
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