Madame bovary (Penguin Books)

This is a major new translation of one of the most popular classics of all time, now in a gorgeous deluxe edition. Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled żeby the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: '"Madame Bovary", c'est moi'.