Ten unusual stories by French literary masters from Voltaire to Camus: "Micromégas," by Voltaire; "The Atheist's Mass" by Balzac; "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler" by Flaubert; "Spleen of Paris" by Baudelaire; "Minuet" by de Maupassant; "The Guest" by Camus, and four more. Accurate English translations appear on pages facing the original French. Also included are a French-English vocabulary list, oral and writing exercises. Critical introductions.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Too Literary for the Living:
The stories chosen for this book are deadly boring, with one exception. Of all the stories of
Maupassant from Madame Fifi to The Diary of a Madman, he has chosen a precious bit of descriptive
banality called Menuet. It depends on your taste. This book made me yawn.
A great way to brush up on your French:
The English translations are not much to brag about, but they are there to serve a specific purpose: enabling us to read the original French. When we are engaged on such a project, we actually do not care about the beauty of the English translations: we need a trot, pretty much. What matters more, I think, is whether the short stories are worth reading, and here Wallace Fowlie has scored a major triumph. Maupassant's "Menuet" and Balzac's "La Messe de l'Athee" are simply superb, and I look forward to... more info
Perversion:
The translations needlessly deviate from the French, idiomatically and semantically and stylistly and syntactically, and the selection indicates a weird religious bent. So, as a teaching tool, this book best serves intermediate students of French, persons who can recognize the deviations. It could derail the progress of beginners.
Voltaire, who cares?:
When I was in college I was fluent in French. I have lost some of that ease in the ensuing years, but can still read French. I decided to get some dual-language books to polish up my reading skills. I discovered however, that I can read and understand Voltaire, but really don't enjoy the stories. Perhaps a book with more current literature would have been better.
