Meursault leads a bachelor life until he commits a random act of violence. His lack of emotion and failure to show remorse serve to increase his guilt in the eyes of the law. This novel explores the predicament of the individual who refuses to pretend and is prepared to face the indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.

This text is an updated edition of Flaubert's classic tale. Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion.

Set against the backdrop of the 1848 Revolution, this is the story of young lawyer Frederic Moreau's infatuation with the demurely exotic Madame Arnoux. This ironic depiction of uneventful lives in a troubled period of European history is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.

One of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's great Comedie Humaine, 'Eugenie Grandet' (1833) is a story of family conflict, unrequited love and self-sacrifice set against the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged policeman Javert.