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The Red and the Black

Stendhal

The Red and the Black

ABRIDGED EDITION

Paper book: €23.99

Digital: €8.99

Original publication
1830
Bilingual edition
22 October 2026
Pages
374
Difficulty
Hard
Genres
Romance, Psychology
Moods
Fall in love, Get ahead in life, Think it through, Travel back in time
Translated from
French

Book summary

The son of a sawmill owner in the Jura, Julien Sorel is poor, proud and ambitious, and secretly admires Napoleon. Taken on as tutor in the household of the mayor of Verrières, he seduces his wife, Madame de Rênal. Then, from the seminary in Besançon to the Paris mansion of the Marquis de La Mole, he climbs through a society that despises him.

It is Stendhal's great novel of ambition and love. Julien, alone against a whole society, is one of the most fascinating heroes in literature.

With the translation always in front of you, you can read this masterpiece in the language you are learning.

The plot

A young man sets himself a challenge. Julien Sorel, a poor young man, looks after the mayor’s children. In summer, the evenings are spent in the garden, under a big linden tree. One evening, sitting in the dark beside…

The world of the book

France in 1830. Under Napoleon, a brave peasant’s son could become a general. But the emperor lost power fifteen years ago, and a king now rules France. For a poor, ambitious young man, only one path upward is left…

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