Sentimental Education

By Gustave Flaubert, Raymond N. MacKenzie (translator),

Book cover of Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man

Book description

A fresh and vivid translation of Flaubert's influential bildungsroman


Gustave Flaubert conceived Sentimental Education, his final complete novel, as the history of his own generation, one that failed to fulfill the promise of the Revolution of 1848. Published a few months before the start of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, it…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Sentimental Education as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This novel is both the story of an unconsummated love affair and an account of the experience and imaginative life of the generation of young people who came to maturity around 1840 and whose lives were either broken or redirected by the revolution of 1848.

Flaubert takes great care to establish a counterpoint between the collapse of political ideals in 1848 and the collapse of the dreams of the individual characters. But Sentimental Education can also be considered as a work of history that brings the past to life and, in the end, offers a deep and, in some ways,…

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