Salammbô

After the First Punic War, the city of Carthage cannot pay the mercenaries who fought for it, and they rise in revolt. In the middle of this savage war stands Salammbô, the daughter of the general Hamilcar Barca and a priestess of the goddess Tanit, and Mathô, a Libyan mercenary chief who steals the goddess's sacred veil and becomes obsessed with her.

Published in 1862 after Flaubert travelled to Tunisia to see the site of Carthage, the novel is based on the account of the historian Polybius and is full of extravagant colour and violence, a complete contrast to Madame Bovary. For North African readers, it is a strange and vivid European vision of their ancient past.

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), the son of a surgeon in Rouen, gave up studying law after a nervous illness and spent most of his life at his family's house at Croisset on the Seine. In 1849 he travelled for nearly two years through Egypt and the Middle East, a journey whose colours run through Salammbô.

He worked for years on each book, shouting his sentences aloud to test them, in search of the exact word. Madame Bovary brought him a trial and fame, and Sentimental Education followed. He was a mentor to Maupassant and a friend of Turgenev.