Bel Ami, or The History of a Scoundrel: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Bel Ami, or The History of a Scoundrel, credited to Guy de Maupassant, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Bel Ami, or The History of a Scoundrel, by Guy de Maupassant. Read by Martin Geeson. “He had faith in his good fortune, in that power of attraction which he felt within him - a power so irresistible that all women yielded to it.” Though firmly set in 1880s Paris, Maupassant's gripping story of an amoral journalist on the make could, with only slight modifications of detail, be updated to the 1960s, to the Reagan-Thatcher years, or maybe to the present day. Anti-hero Georges Duroy is a down-at-heel ex-soldier of no particular talent. Good-looking but somewhat lacking in self-confidence, he discovers an ability to control and exploit women - whereupon his career in journalism takes off, fuelled by the corruption of colleagues and government arrivistes. He may be a provincial Don Juan, but he is neither accident-prone nor heading for a fall... A Hollywood screen adaptation is in preparation at the time of recording. (Summary by Martin Geeson.)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Bel Ami, or The History of a Scoundrel
• Author credits: Guy de Maupassant
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 25
• Listed recording duration: 8:15:20

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• popular literary fiction
• anti-hero
• arrivisme
• flaneur

Opening tracks: first 24 of 25

1. 01 - Poverty — 28:00
2. 02 - Madame Forestier — 25:21
3. 03 - First Attempts — 20:03
4. 04 - Duroy Learns Something — 17:18
5. 05 - The First Intrigue, part one — 16:19
6. 06 - The First Intrigue, part two — 16:07
7. 07 - The First Intrigue, part three — 14:30
8. 08 - A Step Upward, part one — 16:05
9. 09 - A Step Upward, part two — 21:23
10. 10 - A Duel with an End — 25:35
11. 11 - Death and a Proposal — 36:35
12. 12 - Marriage, part one — 17:48
13. 13 - Marriage, part two — 19:25
14. 14 - Jealousy — 14:12
15. 15 - Mme Walter Takes a Hand, part one — 14:52
16. 16 - Mme Walter Takes a Hand, part two — 16:54
17. 17 - A Meeting and the Result — 21:37
18. 18 - Madame Marelle, part one — 22:15
19. 19 - Madame Marelle, part two — 13:32
20. 20 - The Will — 23:34
21. 21 - Suzanne, part one — 18:06
22. 22 - Suzanne, part two — 17:50
23. 23 - Divorce — 18:31
24. 24 - The Final Plot — 19:40

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.