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A Parisian civil servant turned protégé of Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant is considered not only one of the greatest short story writers in all of French literature, but also a pioneer of psychological realism and modernism who helped define the form. Credited with influencing the likes of Chekhov, Maugham, Babel, and O. Henry, Maupassant had, at the time of his death at the age of forty-two, written six novels and some three hundred short stories. Yet in English, Maupassant has, curiously, remained unappreciated by modern readers due to outdated translations that render his prose in an archaic, literal style. In this bold new translation, Sandra Smith—the translator of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise—brings us twenty-eight of Maupassant's essential stories and two novellas in sharp, contemporary language that captures the wit, irony, and emotional depth of his original works.