Boule de Suif — the title story of this first volume of Guy de Maupassant’s collected works — is the story that made his name when it appeared in 1880 in the naturalist anthology Les Soirées de Médan. Set during the Franco-Prussian War, it follows a group of travelers in a carriage who exploit and then scorn a prostitute, exposing the cowardice and hypocrisy of bourgeois respectability with savage economy.
The volume collects this landmark story with several others equally fine. Download this public-domain collection as a free EPUB.