CARMEN AND OTHER STORIES (The World's Classics Series)

Merimee, Prosper; (Translated from the French By Nicholas Jotcham)

ISBN 10: 019282242X / ISBN 13: 9780192822420

Published by Oxford Univ Press, Oxford, UK, 1989

About this Item

Text/BRAND NEW w/trace margin discoloration. Illustrated soft cover/VG w/faint creasing & surface wear to front. PO initials to fEP. Anthology of short stories from Prosper Merimee (1803 - 1870) written between 1829 and 1830. They are: 1, Carmen; 2, Mateo Falcone; 3, The Storming of the Redoubt; 4, Tamango; 4, The Estruscan Vase; 5, The Game of Backgammon; 6, The Venus of Ille; 7, Colomba; and, 8, Lokis, followed by the Appendix: "The final chapter of Carmen added to 1847 Edition".

Seller Inventory # 008686

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CARMEN AND OTHER STORIES (The World's Classics Series)
• Publisher: Oxford Univ Press, Oxford, UK
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019282242X
• ISBN 13: 9780192822420
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition, First Thus
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Anthology
  • Fiction, Novel, Short Story
  • Literature, Literary Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

A selection of stories by one of the earliest exponents of the short-story genre, Prosper Merimee (1803-70). His stories are seen to reveal the paradoxical fascination with the cruelty of violence and passion in a man ostensibly urbane and reticent; to an extent they all explore the contrast between primitive and civilized values. "Carmen", based on an anecdote recounted to Merimee by a Spanish countess in 1830, may have introduced the literary incarnation of the "femme fatale", the woman whose aura of mystery and malevolence exerts a fatal charm on the weak and unwary. Apart from the most famous longer tales "Carmen" and "Colomba", this selection includes the shorter stories, regarded by some as his best or most representative work - "Mateo Falcone", "The Storming of the Redoubt", "Tamango", "The Etruscan Vase", "The Game of Backgammon", "The Venus of Ille" and "Lokis". Their subjects range across the tragic enforcement of a Corsican bandit's code of honour, a historical reconstruction of a Franco-Russian battle, illegal slave-trading, overweening, jealous passion underlying a veneer of Parisian civilization, guilty remorse and its consequences, and the seductive and lethal nature of erotic love entwined with apparently supernatural forces.

Review

'there is no doubt that the French-born Merimee was one of the earlier masters of the short story' Cape Times

'A very good edition and a solid translation.' Dr Lance Butler, University of Stirling