Red and Black (Illustrations from a Famous Translation Series)

The novel focuses on the protagonist Julien's personal struggle and description of his two love experiences, revealing the magnificent class struggle during the Restoration Dynasty and reflecting the broad life picture of political darkness, church corruption, aristocratic reaction and the bourgeoisie's greed for profit. Julien's two love motives are based on love possession as the starting point and ultimately to achieve his own political goals. The structure of the novel is rigorous and well-proportioned, the language is concise and fluent, the characters and their personalities are closely connected with the environment, and it is good at revealing the characters' inner conflicts and instant changes in thoughts and feelings, so as to highlight people's personality characteristics. This is the greatest artistic feature of this book.