Afloat

by Guy de Maupassant, Douglas Parmée (Introduction)

Afloat, originally published as Sur l’eau in 1888, is a work 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.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, France, Travel, French Literature, Literature, Novella

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1888

About the author

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.

Reviews

[حمده الشامسية · Rating 5 out of 5]

قصة "فوق صفحة الماء". للكاتب الفرنسي غي دو موباسان أحد روائع أدب الرعب النفسي والفلسفي المكتوب بعبقرية واقعية،

تكمن قوة موباسان في خلق حالة رعب وجودي خانق من مواقف طبيعية تماماً (مرساة تلتصق بقاع النهر في ليلة مظلمة). حيث ينجح الكاتب في تحويل النهر من مصدر للحياة والجمال إلى كائن غامض، غدار، ومخيف يبتلع الأسرار.