Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) is a brilliant French novelist of the 19th century, a brilliant stylist, and the author of the immortal “Madame Bovary,” which critics around the world consider to be a perfect work of art. His contribution to literature and journalism is so great that it is difficult to evaluate. At the famous “dinners of five”, in which E. Goncourt participated. A. Daudet, I. S. Turgenev, E. Zola, Flaubert read aloud their works, which were destined to influence the emergence and development of entire trends and genre forms of world literature. Hugo’s student and Maupassant’s mentor, the “Viking and Rouen bourgeois” lived in At first glance, a quiet and measured life, but in fact an unusually bright and interesting life. This time it was he who became the hero of another fascinating and exciting story written by a modern master of artistic expression and talented biographer Henri Troyat.