Carmen et autres nouvelles

Carmen, the free-spirited woman who ruins a soldier for love: in Andalusia, Don José gives up everything for her, deserts and becomes a smuggler, but Carmen belongs to no one. Around this novella, which inspired Bizet's opera, three other stories by Mérimée: the storming of a redoubt during the Russian campaign, a Corsican father's terrible sense of honour, and a bronze statue that seems to come alive in a village of Roussillon. Mérimée writes in sober, tense prose, where everything is said in a few lines. Short stories, easy to read one at a time.