Alien Hearts
Contributors: Richard Howard (Introduction, Translator)
Publisher: NYRB Classics; New York Review Books
Published: April 22, 2008
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 180
ISBN-13: 9781590172605
Subjects: General & Literary Fiction; Fiction; Fiction - General; Classics; Literary; Fiction / Literary
Description: Alien Hearts "was the last novel that Guy de Maupassant completed before succumbing to the effects of tertiary syphilis of which he was to die at forty-three. It is the most original and surprising of his novels and the one in which he attains a truly tragic perception of the wounded human heart. "Alien Hearts "is the story of lovers bound by bitterness as much as by passion. Maupassant's hero falls for a woman of the world, a glacially dazzling beauty whose past with an abusive husband leads her to hold him-and everyone-at arm's length. He seeks solace with a servant girl, but remains racked by pointless infatuation.