The Left Hand

Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.2

Word count: 202K words
Chapters: 21

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La Main Gauche by Guy de MaupassantAuthor: Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

La Main Gauche is a short story collection by Maupassant, originally in French and released free by Project Gutenberg. Maupassant excelled at the short story, rendering the darkness and absurdity of human nature through calm, restrained narration, and this book continues that style. The stories gathered here mostly revolve around desire, marriage, vanity and fate; they are tightly plotted and often end with a twist. As a public-domain ebook it is easy to obtain, making it suitable as introductory reading material in the original French and also for readers studying Maupassant's short-story art who wish to read it closely alongside a Chinese translation. Because it is the original French edition, reading it requires some language foundation; with annotations or a bilingual edition, the reader can better appreciate its linguistic rhythm and narrative technique. Overall, this is a compact but thought-provoking collection, suited to reading one piece at a time in spare moments and also useful as supplementary material for the study of nineteenth-century French short fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with intermediate or higher French reading ability who want to read short stories in the original
Literature lovers interested in Maupassant's short-story style who wish to read the original texts closely
University readers studying nineteenth-century French literature who need public-domain source material
General readers who like the short-story form and are used to reading in fragments

Not a good fit for

Readers with no French at all who can read only Chinese
Readers expecting a long, continuous plot or a single complete story
Readers who prefer light, inspirational, warm and comforting content

Reading tips

Read one story through first, then check the details against a Chinese translation to appreciate the wording and tone of the original.
After each story, jot down the design of its ending twist to build up a sense of Maupassant's narrative techniques.
Keep a French dictionary or an electronic lookup tool at hand; when you meet an unfamiliar word, guess first and then look it up.
Advance at a pace of two or three stories a week to avoid fatigue from reading too much at once.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or French?

This is the original French edition, released by Project Gutenberg and labeled French. Readers without French will need a Chinese translation or bilingual material to read it, otherwise it will be quite difficult to understand.

What level of French is needed to read it?

Intermediate or higher French reading ability is recommended, enough to follow common narrative sentences and to handle unfamiliar words with a dictionary. Beginners can start with a Chinese translation or try shorter, clearly plotted pieces first.

Is this a novel or a short-story collection?

It is a collection of Maupassant's short stories. The pieces are relatively independent and suited to reading one at a time. Readers need not read straight through; they can pick the stories that interest them first and come back to the rest later.

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About the author

Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893 Author

Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) was a renowned French novelist. This library holds 69 of his works, including short-story collections, novels, and complete editions. His representative works include Une vie, Boule de Suif, Bel Ami, and multi-volume complete collections of his short stories and writings. Public information is limited, so his biographical details are not elaborated here; nevertheless, the works in this library show that he excelled at short stories while also writing well-structured novels. His short stories often capture turning points in ordinary lives and human weaknesses through calm, restrained narration, while his novels focus on social class, desire, and fate. His language is concise, his observation precise, and his endings forceful, and his influence on later short-story writing is profound.