The Red and the Black
by Stendhal · 1830
Classics · ranked #50 in category
Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son of brilliant intelligence and fierce ambition, rises through Napoleonic society using his abilities and his lovers — first a provincial mayor's wife, then an aristocratic Parisian — to advance beyond his station. Stendhal's novel is a study in the psychology of ambition, hypocrisy and the impossibility of authentic selfhood under social constraint.
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