Alien Hearts
Author(s): Guy de Maupassant
Alien Hearts was the last novel that Maupassant completed before succumbing to the effects of tertiary syphilis of which he was to die at 43. It is the most original and surprising of his novels and the one in which he attains a truly tragic perception of the wounded human heart. Alien Hearts is the story of three lovers bound by bitterness as much as passion. Maupassant's artist hero falls for a woman of the world-a glacially dazzling beauty whose past with an abusive husband leads her to hold him-and everyone-at arm's length. He seeks solace with his doting mistress, but remains racked by pointless infatuation. Richard Howard's new English version of this complex and brooding psychological novel reveals the final, unexpected flowering of the great French realist's art.
General Information
- :
- : New York Review of Books, Incorporated, The
- : New York Review of Books, Incorporated, The
- : 0.204
- : 01 August 2008
- : United States
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Guy de Maupassant
- : Paperback
- : 843.8
- : 232
More About The Product
"Maupassant is the world's most accomplished of narrators." -Joseph Conrad "[Maupassant] is brilliantly clever." -Henry James "[Maupassant] is so relentlessly artistic that he puts the fear of philosophy in your heart." -"The New York Times"
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), after serving in the Franco-Prussian War, became a close friend of Flaubert and his circle. He wrote hundreds of short stories as well as novels and verse. In his later years, he suffered from mental illness, and he died in an asylum. Richard Howard is a poet, translator and critic. Since 1958, he has translated more than one hundred fifty books and has earned recognition as one of the truly authoritative translators of modern French literature.
