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Ball-of-Fat

by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
Translated by M. Walter Dunne (1863-1920).

The first significant published short story of French author Guy de Maupassant, and generally acknowledged as his greatest work, “Ball-of-Fat” (French title: Boule de Suif) is the touching story of an interrupted coach ride from Rouen to Le Havre during which occurs the corruption of a principled prostitute by immoral and hypocritical members of the upper class. The story is set during the occupation of Rouen at the time of the Franco-Prussian War.

(Summary by Michael Thomas Robinson)

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• Online-text
• Wikipedia – Guy de Maupassant
• Wikipedia – Boule de Suif
• LibriVox’s Ball-of-Fat Internet Archive page
• M4B format available
• Zip file of the entire book – 53.4MB
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Total running time: 1:51:15
Read by Michael Thomas Robinson

mp3 and ogg files

• Part 1 – 00:37:31
  [mp3@64kbps - 18.0MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 36.0MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 19.9MB]
• Part 2 – 00:44:36
  [mp3@64kbps - 21.4MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 42.8MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 23.8MB]
• Part 3 – 00:29:08
  [mp3@64kbps - 13.9MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 27.9MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 15.6MB]

Cataloged on December 19, 2007