num_pages: 177
description: Alien Hearts was the last book that Guy de Maupassant finished before his death aged just forty-three. It is the most original and psychologically penetrating of his several novels and the one in which he attains a truly tragic perception of the wounded human heart. Andr Mariolle is a rich handsome gifted young man who cannot settle on what to do with himself. Madame de Burne a glacially dazzling beauty wants Mariolle to attend her exclusive salon for artists composers writers and other intellectuals. At first Mariolle keeps his distance but then he hits on the solution to all his problems: caring for nothing in particular he will devote himself to being in love; Madame de Burne will be his everything. Soon lover and beloved are equally lost within a hall of mirrors of their common devising. Richard Howards new English translation of this complex and brooding novelthe first in more than a hundred yearsreveals the final unexpected flowering of a great French realists art.
language: English
title: Alien Hearts
publisher: NYRB Classics