Flaubert's best works, ranked

Peter Brooks is the author of Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year.

Number one on the list of Brooks's favorite Flaubert's works:Madame Bovary

This remains as fresh and pertinent today as it was at publication—and it is still a shocker. We have seen plenty of adultery in the novel, but Emma Bovary’s experience of love and sex both marital and