Boule de Suif

About

Maupassant's debut story (1880) — the work that made him famous overnight — is among the greatest short stories in any language: a group of Norman bourgeois fleeing the Prussian occupation demand that the prostitute Boule de Suif sleep with a Prussian officer to allow their carriage to proceed; she refuses, then capitulates; they reward her with contempt. The story's structural precision, its devastating portrait of middle-class hypocrisy, and its sustained moral outrage are unmatched in French short fiction. As group reading, the carriage scenes are superbly suited to ensemble voices.