john callahan’s Reviews > Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year > Status Update

The terrible year is 1870-1871, when France lost the Franco-Prussian War and when the Paris Commune was formed and crushed; the friendship is a platonic one between Flaubert and George Sand' and the novel is Flaubert's Sentimental Education (1869), which Flaubert said would have prevented the horrors of the "terrible year," if only more people had understood it. Incredbly readable so far.