Red and the Black (French, #503) (Modern Library) (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)

by Stendhal

It mirrors, rather than paints, mobile and revealing glimpses of life as it was whiled away in the climate of fear and greedy drawing-room conformity that followed Waterloo. Julien Sorel, the novel's restless, ambitious hero, rebels against his circumstances and wills himself to make something of his life by adopting a code of hypocrisy. On the road to the surprising crime he commits (out of passion, principle or insanity), he turns into Stendhal's greatest and most completely human creation.

• ISBN10: 0679601627
• ISBN13: 9780679601623
• Publish Date: 4 July 1995 (first published 1 November 1930)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 25 January 2009
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Random House Inc
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 639
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Oddly enough, I think most of the fault I found with it was the translation (Margaret Shaw's "Scarlet and Black" by Penguin, 1953); I was two chapters from the end when I found another copy I had stowed away, and in those two chapters felt more for the characters than I had the whole of the other book. Otherwise my comments were this: Julien is an asshole. Now I'm reading it again, and he's still an asshole, but at least a more fleshed out, less ingratiating one. Stendhal knew what he was doing; don't mess with the man's words.