For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious
banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly
modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial
housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in
a desperate love affair. A succA]s de scandale in its day, "Madame
Bovary" remains a powerful and arousing novel. Translated with an
Introduction by Geoffrey Wall New Preface by MichA]le Roberts