Published at the end of Flaubert’s career, Three Tales is a collection of three compelling short stories about faith, loneliness and love. In ‘A Simple Heart’ (the inspiration for Julian Barnes’s novel Flaubert’s Parrot), a saint-like servant girl begins to experience religious visions of her pet parrot after enduring the loss of loved ones. ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller’, based on a stained-glass window in Rouen Cathedral, presents the origin story of Julian the Hospitaller, who renounces the violence of his past and cares for the indigent. ‘Herodias’, the final story, retells the beheading of St John the Baptist, and the seduction of Herod by Salome. Elegant and bracing, Three Tales is a rich, stylistic showcase from the writer best known for the perennial favourite Madame Bovary.
