Guy de Maupassant

In July 1881, having established himself as a writer of great pedigree and potential and at the beginning of a ten-year period that would see him become one of the most popular authors of his age, Maupassant embarked on a dangerous journey to the troubled colony of Algeria, believed to be on the verge of an Arab insurrection. In To the Sun Maupassant describes a land and populace vanquished by the twin powers of the sun and French colonialism, he bows down before the former, finding a personal absolution in the light, heat and space of the desert. But he stands up to the latter, pointing out the faults and absurdities of French colonialism, all the while demonstrating his brilliance as a political reporter who came to understand Algeria and its problems in such a short space of time. This is the first complete English translation of Maupassant's travel book Au soleil (1884), including the three Fragments 'At the Spas'; 'In Brittany'; and 'Le Creusot', as well as full critical apparatus.

The literary godfather of such writers as H. H. Munro ("Saki"), O Henry, and Roald Dahl, Maupassant was the master of writing short stories with a twist. Now his most fascinating tales have been collected in this sterling collection. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Afloat is a book of dazzling but treacherously shifting currents, a seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast that opens up to reveal unexpected depths, as Guy de Maupassant merges fact and fiction, dream, polemic, and documentation in a wholly original manner. Humorous and troubling stories, unreliable confessions, stray reminiscences, and thoughts on life, love, art, nature, and society all find a place in Maupassant's pages, which are, in conception and in effect, so many reflections of the fluid sea on which he finds himself-at once happily and precariously-afloat. Afloat courts risk in both form and content, making itself up as it goes along. As a work of art, it is as fresh and startling as the paintings of Maupassant's great contemporaries van Gogh and Gauguin.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT was 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.