Guide to the classics: bemused by the contemporary world? The Red and the Black might be just the friend you need

On the back of my copy of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (1830), novelist Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, says: “I was in my twenties when I found The Red and the Black – and a friend.”

It was the same for me – and I still think of the novel as a friend. It’s not because anything much good happens in it. The Red and the Black is a story of almost unrelenting hypocrisy and corruption. Rather, the friendship is with Stendhal himself – or at least his wry persona.

Stendhal…

© La Conversation - mardi 20 octobre 2026