Bel Ami
by Guy de Maupassant
"Bel-Ami" is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Durois, nicknamed "Bel-Ami" by his female fans) who rises to the top in the fin-de-sihcle of Paris. This is a novel about money, sex, and power that takes place against the backdrop of French colonial policy in North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society that is uncomfortably close to ours and is a devastating satire on the complexity of modern journalism. Bel-Ami has the status of an authentic record of the apotheosis of bourgeois capitalism in the Third Republic. But the creative tension between modern behavioral analysis and the fabric of the late nineteenth century is one of the reasons why Bel-Ami remains one of the best French novels of his time, and is also considered Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist.
