Une Vie (A Woman’s Life), Maupassant’s first novel published in 1883, is the centerpiece of this fifth volume of his collected works. Tracing the entire adult life of Jeanne, a Norman noblewoman whose romantic idealism is steadily eroded by a faithless husband, a dissolute son, and the indifferent march of time, it is one of the most compassionate and quietly devastating novels in French literature.
Tolstoy considered it the greatest French novel. Download this public-domain edition as a free EPUB and judge for yourself.