{"product_id":"2026100009969-secondhand-madame-bovary-a-story-of-provincial-life","title":"Madame Bovary: A Story Of Provincial Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Excellent\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket - cloth\/board in good condition\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew novels in the Western canon have so devastatingly laid bare the collision between romantic illusion and provincial reality as Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary: A Story of Provincial Life. Set in the stifling bourgeois towns of Normandy, France, the novel chronicles the tragic trajectory of Emma Bovary — a doctor's wife whose insatiable hunger for passion, luxury, and escape from mediocrity drives her into ruinous love affairs and mounting debt, until reality closes in with merciless finality.\n\nFirst published in 1857 and instantly scandalous, Madame Bovary stands as a cornerstone of literary realism, celebrated for Flaubert's obsessive precision of style — his legendary pursuit of *le mot juste*, the exact right word. This Franklin Library edition, rendered in a celebrated translation by Francis Steegmuller and illustrated by Skip Liepke, presents Flaubert's prose with both scholarly fidelity and visual elegance. Beneath its surface as a tale of adultery and ambition lies a searing indictment of sentimentalism, consumerism, and the dangerous power of fiction itself — leaving the reader to wonder whether Emma Bovary was destroyed by society, or by the stories she chose to believe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49161016115419,"sku":"2026100009969-SECONDHAND","price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/97b9e28f-58a9-476f-b4f6-778efd9df0a3.png?v=1787189083","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100009969-secondhand-madame-bovary-a-story-of-provincial-life","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}