Gustave Flaubert

One single noise reached her ears now, the voice of the parrot.
With an attention to the details of bourgeois life considered almost scandalous at the time, A Simple Heart will remind many why Gustave Flaubert was acclaimed as the first great master of realism. But this heart-breaking tale of a simple servant woman and her life-long search for love meant something else to Flaubert. Written near the end of his life, the work...

First published in 1869, this novel offers a meticulously accurate, ironic depiction of uneventful lives in a crucial period of European history. Flaubert combines intricate political and social upheaval with a close scrutiny of individual motives to produce one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.