Red and Black A New Translation, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism

Based on a real crime that Stendhal read about in a French tabloid in 1827, the Red and the Black is a brilliant psychological portrait of passion, opportunism, and political intrigue set in nineteenth-century France. It is the story of Julien Sorel, a young man of humble origins but high aspirations, whose prospects for a respectable public career are cut short by boundless egotism, tragic love, and revenge.