Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet is a brilliant satire about two men who inherit enough money to retire and then decide to master every field of knowledge they can find. Their attempts at farming, science, literature, medicine, and philosophy turn into a comic catalog of confusion, vanity, and repeated failure.
The novel is funny in a dry, exasperated way, but it is also a sharp study of how easy it is to mistake reading for understanding. Readers who enjoy literary satire, unfinished classics, and books about the limits of expertise will find Bouvard and Pécuchet both entertaining and strangely modern. It remains sharply funny even today. The joke lands hardest because Flaubert never stops taking his characters' confidence seriously.
No posts about this book yet. Be the first in the app!
