Boule de Suif

Book summary

During the war of 1870, ten travellers leave Rouen, occupied by the Prussians, in the same stagecoach: local notables, two nuns, a democrat and a prostitute nicknamed Boule de Suif. Held at an inn by a Prussian officer who sets his conditions, they discover what their principles are worth. The young woman, the only one who shared her food with them, becomes the target of every kind of pressure. Around this story the volume gathers eleven other stories by Maupassant that have nothing to do with the war: tales of marriage, adultery, money and small middle-class compromises. A collection that shows Maupassant’s sharp, ironic view of social hypocrisy.