Afloat (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Maupassant, Guy De

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590172590 ISBN 13: 9781590172599

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2008

Synopsis

Afloat, originally published as Sur l’eau in 1888, is a book of dazzling but treacherously shifting currents, a seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast that opens up to reveal unexpected depths, as Guy de Maupassant merges fact and fiction, dream and documentation in a wholly original style. Humorous and troubling stories, unreliable confessions, stray reminiscences, and thoughts on life, love, art, nature, and society all find a place in Maupassant’s pages, which are, in conception and in effect, so many reflections of the fluid sea on which he finds himself–happily but forever precariously–afloat. Afloat is thus a book that in both content and form courts risk while setting out to chart the meaning, and limits, of freedom, a book that makes itself up as it goes along and in doing so proves as startling and compellingly vital as the paintings of Maupassant’s contemporaries van Gogh and Gauguin.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

There are few great books about sailing on pleasure boats, but this is one. Afloat is the story of Maupassant's voyage around the Mediterranean coast aboard his yacht, the Bel-Ami. It is not only the record of a voyage, but a portrait of life at sea and of French provincial life on the land. It is also a confession: Maupassant reflects on the literary life, society, women, and politics, and his intimate thoughts are accompanied by the rhythms of the sea and the wind. This edition includes previously unpublished translations of three articles by Maupassant.

About the Author:

Guy de Maupassant (1850—1893), after serving in the Franco-Prussian War, became close friends with Flaubert and his circle. He wrote hundreds of short stories as well as novels and verse. In his later years, he suffered from mental illness, and he died in an asylum.

Douglas Parmée (1914-2008), a lifetime fellow of Queens College, Cambridge, has translated works by Flaubert, Zola, Baudelaire, and Chamfort, among others, including the NYRB Classics titles, The Child by Jules Vallès and Afloat by Guy de Maupassant. He is a past winner of the Society of Authors Scott-Moncrieff Prize for French translation. 

About this edition

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1590172590
• ISBN 13: 9781590172599
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120