In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the May–June 2020 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes (in the old suggestions thread - the new one hasn't had time to gather many votes yet), the fifth topic challenge of 2020 will be
the works of Guy de Maupassant
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main meta post. In short, during May–June 2020 we should all try to read one or more works by Guy de Maupassant.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, but those who participate will be forever remembered in the annals of our history. And of course it goes without saying that questions on other works are more than welcome during May and June too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of any of Guy de Maupassant's stories and asking good questions about them. These questions should be tagged with guy-de-maupassant and french-literature, and either short-stories or a specific-work tag for longer works. We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is the original presentation of this topic challenge, which contains several useful links:
Guy de Maupassant (1850 – 1893) was probably the most important 19th-century French author of short stories. Some of them are very well known, e.g. Boule de Suif.
His stories are now in the public domain. Many of his stories are available on Wikisource in French. A number of English translations are available on Wikisource.
Other English translations are available at ebooks@Adelaide.The complete collection of his short stories is available in English at Project Gutenberg (which currently blocks users from Germany).For a printed selection, see for example, Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works (W. W. Norton, 2016; 448 pages).
The online availability of English translations should make participation in the reading challenge easier. Even though we already have a few questions about guy-de-maupassant, there are still dozens of his stories that have never been discussed.
This is a particularly easy author to "dip in" to his works, because he wrote many short stories which are old enough to be available online freely and legally, even in translation.
What's next?
- The April-May 2020 topic challenge, The Stranger / Meursault, is still ongoing. So is the March-April 2020 one, R. K. Narayan, for another week or so. It's not too late to participate in them too!
- Vote here (new thread) for the next topic challenge (June–July), or propose your own in an answer there!
