Possessed of a voracious sexual appetite, bitter and frequently disillusioned by the history of his country and the foibles of its people is not a description that does justice to the tortured soul that was Guy de Maupassant. He was also a compassionate and deeply patriotic man, volunteering to fight for his country in the Franco-Prussian war at the age of 20 and again saw action reporting on the French Campaign in Tunisia in 1881

Unfortunately these irreconcilable internal conflicts eventually led to syphilis, hallucination, attempted suicide, madness and an early death in an asylum at the age of 43 - most of which horror was self predicted in ‘The Horla’. During his short life, however he wrote over 300 short stories - as well as 6 novels and the vast canon of his original and unusual tales placed him at the pinnacle of world literature as the master story teller.

The stories presented here are in this order; A Piece of String. The Diamond Necklace. Two Fishermen. Madame Tellier’s House. A Coward. The Chairmender. The Little Soldiers. Boule de Suif [Fatball]. The Dowry. The Horla.

Collection	Narrator	Length
French	Peter Joyce	6 hrs 30 mins

Media	Compact Disc	Download
Media Qty	6	6
Audio Format	CD-DA	.wma
Book Code	FR-501CD	FR-501DL
ISBN	978 1 86015 025-8	n/a
Price	£18.49	£8.99

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850 –1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. His stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870s. The Maupassants were an old Lorraine family who had settled in Normandy in the middle of the 18th century. Until he was thirteen years old Guy lived with his mother at Étretat, in the Villa des Verguies, where between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of nature and outdoor sports; he went fishing with the fishermen off the coast and spoke Norman with the peasants. He was deeply devoted to his mother. As he entered junior high school, he met the great author Gustave Flaubert. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion. Then he was sent to the Rouen Lycée, where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals. The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer and fought bravely.

Click here to find out more about Guy de Maupassant.

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