(Original, Unabridged Classic, Premium Hardbound Collector's Edition, Ideal for Gifting)
Gustave Flaubert
"She wanted something else… something better. Passion and perfection were out there somewhere. All she had to do was find them."
Emma Bovary is a country doctor's wife whose romantic imagination cannot be satisfied by the life she has chosen. Convinced that passion and fulfilment exist somewhere beyond Yonville's grey horizons, she pursues them through adulterous affairs and reckless spending — with consequences that are as inevitable as they are devastating. Gustave Flaubert published Madame Bovary in 1857, was prosecuted for obscenity, and won: the trial turned the novel into a cause célèbre.
Regarded as the first great modern novel, Madame Bovary is the work that Zola, Chekhov, Joyce, Camus, and Sartre all acknowledged as a founding text of realist fiction. Flaubert's prose — precise, ironic, achingly beautiful — renders Emma's inner world with a clinical empathy that makes her both pitiable and impossible to look away from.
This premium hardbound collector's edition with sprayed edges presents Flaubert's original, unabridged text — an essential volume for any serious literary library.
