Guy de Maupassant is a master of the short story. This collection reflects his remarkable diversity, with stories that vary in theme and tone, and range from tragedy and satire to comedy and farce. With a simplicity of style that masks complex philosophy, Maupassant can illuminate an entire code of values by means of a few telling details. He exposes the brutality of war and the hypocrisy it spawns, and depicts the petty limitations, the dissimulations and the vanities inherent at different levels of society. His stories are linked by a trenchant irony and by a preoccupation with the frailty of human nature and the futility of so many lives.

WHEN GUY DE MAUPASSANT'S first story, Boule de Stir, was pablished in Zole's Soirees de Miden, a collection of naturalist writing of 1880, his reputation was instantly made and he never looked back. B0u/e de Sutf is a masterpiece,acclaimed immediately by the celelrated French novelist Flaubert, the author's friend and mentor. During the next ten years, Maupassant went on to write novels, poetry,travel books and plays, as well as over three-hundred short stories which appeared regularly in journals such as Gil Blas and Le Gaulois.