Bed 29 and Other Stories

This selection gathers twenty-six short stories by Maupassant, written in the 1880s. The title tale concerns Irma, a Rouen woman who, after the Franco-Prussian occupation, lies in a hospital bed numbered 29, wrecked by disease she passed to a Prussian officer. Companion pieces typically treat the same war, Norman towns and farms, soldiers, clerks, prostitutes, and sudden ironic reversals of money, lust, or patriotism. The volume is a set of independent contes, not a novel and not a history of 1870.

Bound in pale brown cloth covers printed with a design in dark brown by Smithson. Dark brown endleaves. Dark brown slipcase.