Bouvard and Pécuchet
Gustave Flaubert
328 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 1564783936
ISBN13:
Language: English
Publish: 1143532800000
19th CenturyClassicsFictionFranceFrench LiteratureHumorLiterary FictionLiteratureNovelsRoman
In his own words, the novel is “a kind of encyclopedia made into farce . . . A book in which I shall spit out my bile.” At the center of this book are Bouvard and Pécuchet, two retired clerks who set out in a search for truth and knowledge with persistent optimism in light of the fact that each new attempt at learning about the world ends in disaster.
In the literary tradition of Rabelais, Cervantes, and Swift, this story is told in that blend of satire and sympathy that only genius can compound, and the reader becomes genuinely fond of these two Don Quixotes of Ideas. Apart from being a new translation, this edition includes Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas.