Dear Friend

The novel of the master of psychological prose Guy de Maupassant about a young seducer who shamelessly exploits women for his selfish goals and success, in terms of the boldness of the theme and the realism of the narrative, stands alongside the scandalous "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert. And although Maupassant, unlike his colleague and friend, was not subjected to trial and ostracism, on the contrary, he was a very successful author, the scandal of his prose and the merciless verdicts that the writer issued to contemporary society forced critics for many years to hypocritically dismiss his "deliberate eroticism" or simply ignore it. Today, Maupassant's works, and especially this novel, give us a very clear and bitter picture of the spiritual impoverishment of French society during the "Beautiful Era."