Madame Bovary

''A masterpiece'' Julian Barnes

Flaubert''s erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of a married woman''s affair caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. Its heroine, Emma Bovary, is stifled by provincial life as the wife of a doctor. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. B...