Used book – Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert, Pierre-Marc de Biasi

An eighteen-year-old provincial youth, full of dreams and quite charming, comes to Paris for his studies. From 1840 to the eve of the 1851 coup d'état, he learns about the world in a society undergoing profound upheaval. Along the way, he encounters great love and the contingencies of pleasure, the Revolution and its false apostles, art, the power of money and stupidity, the reversibility of beliefs, fraternal friendship and the inevitability of betrayals, without ever managing to commit to any cause other than observing the loss of his own illusions.

Written in dazzling language and according to innovative narrative rules, *Sentimental Education*, published in 1869, is perhaps Flaubert's most accomplished and mysterious masterpiece. By seeking to represent the very essence of lived time, the author conveys to us a philosophy of history, a morality of existence, and an aesthetic of memory that remain surprisingly relevant for unraveling today's enigmas.

Edited by Pierre-Marc de Biasi.