Geoffrey Wall gives us Flaubert in all his contradictory splendor: as a man who lived quietly at home in the sphere of his widowed mother, writing novels at a rate of five words an hour; as an irregular visitor to Paris, where he participated in important literary and social milieus; and as a passionate traveler whose trips put him in company with courtesans, actresses, acrobats, gypsies, idiots, and simpletons of every stripe, until he returned home "to live like an oyster." Flaubert's outwardly calm and inwardly turbulent life created the complex, intriguing world of his imperishable novels and stories.