Bel-Ami

Hugo's sprawling novel of Jean Valjean, the convict who spends a lifetime trying to outrun his past. The complete unabridged French text, covering the Paris barricades, the sewers and the police inspector who never stops looking.

Victor Hugo

The medieval Paris novel built around the cathedral, Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Hugo spends as much time on the architecture of the city as on the characters, which is exactly why the book saved the building.

Victor Hugo

Emma Bovary marries a country doctor, finds provincial life unbearable, and goes looking for the romance she read about in novels. Flaubert's prose is the reason this book is taught as the birth of the modern novel.

Gustave Flaubert

A retired pasta merchant ruins himself for two ungrateful daughters while a young law student learns how Paris really works. The novel that opens Balzac's Comédie Humaine and introduces its recurring cast.

Honoré de Balzac

A miser's daughter in a quiet provincial town falls for a cousin from Paris, and money decides everything that follows. Shorter and tighter than most of Balzac, which makes it a good place to start with him.

Honoré de Balzac