Audiobook · read by volunteers
Ball-of-Fat
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893)
Read by Michael Thomas Robinson · 3 chapters · 1 h 51
About the book
During the Franco-Prussian War, a coach leaves occupied Rouen for Le Havre, carrying a small group of passengers: respectable merchants, a count and his wife, a pair of nuns, a democrat, and a young woman known as Ball-of-Fat, a prostitute who is plump, kind and patriotic. When the coach is stopped by a Prussian officer, the travellers find themselves at the mercy of a demand that tests their principles. Guy de Maupassant’s story, French title Boule de Suif, is often counted his masterpiece, a touching and cruel account of how hypocrisy and self-interest can corrupt a person of real principle. This English version, published by M. Walter Dunne, is read by one LibriVox volunteer in three parts, in about two hours. It is a story of rare force and clarity. The ending, left for you to discover, lingers in the mind.
Introduction
Guy de Maupassant, who lived from 1850 to 1893, was a French writer and one of the masters of the short story. Born in Normandy, he was a pupil and friend of Gustave Flaubert, who guided his early writing. “Boule de Suif” appeared in 1880, in a collective volume of tales about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871, and it made him famous almost overnight. It is generally considered the first significant story he published, and many critics see it as his greatest.
The story has a precise setting, in the winter of the French defeat. A group of people from different social classes share a journey, and the hierarchy of the coach, with its comforts and its provisions, is a miniature of the society around it. Maupassant observes each character in a few strokes, with irony, and he builds to a point at which the apparently respectable show what they are made of. The tale is among the most admired examples of realism and of narrative economy.
The English text recorded here is a translation published by M. Walter Dunne in 1903, in a collected edition of Maupassant’s works. The recording has three parts and lasts about one hour fifty. A single LibriVox volunteer reads it.
The story rewards both a first hearing and a second, since many details of the first scenes take on a new meaning once the whole is known. It is a short, memorable introduction to the French short story, and its themes of hypocrisy and moral courage remain relevant. It is also a fine example of the craft of the short story, in which every character and every detail serves the shape of the whole.
Public domain
Guy de Maupassant died in 1893: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text