Maupassant's second novel, "Bel-Ami" (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened "Bel-Ami" by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-siecle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society uncomfortably close to our own and is a devastating satire of the sleaziness of contemporary journalism. "Bel-Ami" enjoys the status of an authentic record of the apotheosis of bourgeois capitalism under the Third Republic. This translation offers an introduction and notes on the text. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.