The Red And The Black

by Stendhal Narrated by Geoffrey Giuliano, The Scythe

Overview

The Red and the Black by Stendhal is a classic novel without requiring lists to grasp its essence. This French novel, first published in 1830, explores themes of ambition, passion, and the social tensions of post-Napoleonic France.

The protagonist, Julien Sorel, is a young man of a modest background with intense ambition. As he rises from a carpenter's son to a tutor and clergyman, he faces both opportunities and opposition due to his lower status. His journey is driven by his desire for success and love, yet his inner conflict and moral struggles lead him to question his values, society, and the genuine meaning of happiness.

The novel's title, The Red and the Black, symbolizes this duality in Julien's life-the red reflecting passion, desire, and military aspirations, and the black signifying the somber life of a clergyman, which represents compromise and calculated ambition. This tension between personal desire and societal pressure gives the novel its intensity, painting a vivid picture of individualism clashing with a rigid social structure.

It's a deeply psychological work that examines human motivation, class barriers, and the power dynamics between ambition and authenticity.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193714088
Publisher:	Icon Audio Arts
Publication date:	11/01/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Major New Translation
The Red and the Black, Stendhal’s masterpiece, is the story of Julien Sorel, a young dreamer from the provinces, fueled by Napoleonic ideals, whose desire to make his fortune sets in motion events both mesmerizing and tragic. Sorel’s quest to find himself, and the doomed love he encounters along the way, are delineated with an unprecedented psychological depth and realism. At the same time, Stendhal weaves together the social life and fraught political intrigues of post–Napoleonic France, bringing that world to unforgettable, full-color life. His portrait of Julien and early-nineteenth-century France remains an unsurpassed creation, one that brilliantly anticipates modern literature.
Neglected during its time, The Red and the Black has assumed its rightful place as one of the world’s great books, and Burton Raffel’s extraordinary new translation, coupled with an enlightening Introduc-tion by Diane Johnson, helps it shine more brightly than ever before.

Author Biography: Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) was born in Grenoble in 1783. He served in Napoleon’s cavalry and thereafter lived in Italy and Paris, where he wrote many books, including On Love, the autobiographical Life of Henri Brulard, The Charterhouse of Parma (which he wrote in fifty-two days), and The Red and the Black. He died in 1842.
Burton Raffel is a distinguished professor of humanities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His many translations include Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, winner of the 1991 French-American Foundation Translation Prize, Chrétien de Troyes’s Arthurian Romances, Cervantes’s Don Quijote, and Balzac’s Père Goriot. His translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies.
Diane Johnson is the author of ten novels—most recently Le Mariage and Le Divorce—two books of essays, two biographies, and the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s classic film The Shining. She has been a finalist four times for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

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