Available in English for the first time in more than a century, Like Death is an ideal introduction to Guy de Maupassant, the progenitor of the short story as we know it today.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), journalist, novelist, poet, memoirist, playwright, and short-story writer, was one of the most notable men of letters of nineteenth-century France. Above all, he is celebrated for his stories, which transformed and defined the genre for years. Richard Howard is the author of seventeen volumes of poetry, has published more than one hundred fifty translations from the French, and has received a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
“A story of love’s descriptive irrational power—think Proust’s
‘Swann in Love’…Like other great psychological novelists (Henry
James was an admirer, as was Tolstoy), Maupassant proves a master
at the slow sea change of human emotions, and even more their
complexity…[Maupassant] turns an impassioned chronicle of
destructive love into a very modern-seeming portrait of aging,
friendship, and loss.” —Martin Riker, The Wall Street
Journal
"You can practically hear the rustling of the ladies’ silks, or
catch the sobs that are such a feature of the erotic lives of high
society...And my God, is it sexy. This is a love in which intellect
and emotion are at play at the same time. There is passion and
there is calculation...Drink deeply of this intoxicating, heady
work.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
“Maupassant is the world’s most accomplished of
narrators.” —Joseph Conrad
“The psychoemotional precision of Maupassant in an elegant new
translation...A finely shaded portrait of desire, will, and the
complex entanglements of love, set against cutting social
commentary from a realist master.” —Kirkus Reviews,
Starred
"A psychological novel par excellence." —Lorin
Stein, Harper’s
"[Maupassant] is so relentlessly artistic that he puts the fear of
philosophy in your heart." —The New York Times
"Richard Howard's elegant translation of Like Death has
the cool exactitude and passionate interplay of characters that
readers expect from Guy de Maupassant, whose 1889 novel tells with
ironic detachment and killing specificity the story of a portrait
painter's great love." —Shelf Awareness
"[Maupassant] is brilliantly clever." —Henry James
"Maupassant is the world’s most accomplished of
narrators." —Joseph Conrad
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
