In the annals of story-telling, said Henry James, Maupassant stands like 'a lion in the path'.
The perfect master of a difficult art, he dissects the timeless moods of human nature with a clear-eyed pessimism which reduces the whole of existence to a heap of vanities. Maupassant's ability to provoke, amuse, and chill spans the whole range of human experience from low farce to high tragedy.
This selection of twenty-seven stories shows Maupassant at his comic, cruel, and brilliant best. In addition to the poignant title story, it includes one of the most famous tales ever written, The Necklace , and Le Horla, an account of a disintegrating personality that chillingly parallels the author's own decline into madness. All the stories demonstrate his genius for invention and his ability to write unblinkingly about the absurdity of the human condition, supporting Henry James' claim that in the annals of story-telling, Maupassant stands `like a lion in the path'.
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