The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bel Ami, by Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

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Title: Bel Ami

Author: Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant


Language: English

Maupassant's second novel, Bel-Ami (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened "Bel-Ami" by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-sihcle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society uncomfortably close to our own and is a devastating satire of the sleaziness of contemporary journalism.