Bel-Ami

Georges Duroy arrives in Paris with an ex-soldier's swagger, good looks, and almost nothing else. Charming, unscrupulous, and hungry, he talks his way into a job at a newspaper and quickly grasps the real machinery of the Belle Époque: that advancement runs on flattery, seduction, and the influence of well-placed women.

Rechristened "Bel-Ami" by his admirers, Duroy climbs from poverty toward wealth and power by exploiting every woman and patron who can lift him a rung higher, discarding each in turn. Maupassant tracks his ascent with cool, unsparing irony, using one man's conquest of Parisian society to expose the corruption of the press, politics, and the marriage market of his age.

A cornerstone of French realism, Bel-Ami is a sharp, worldly novel about ambition without conscience.