Gustave Flaubert

Discovered in 2003, it was love at first sight. My favorite writer of the French nineteenth century, but I would say in general. He produced few works, but all of superior quality and all different in genre and writing style. "Memoirs of a Madman," his first work, represents the preamble to Sentimental Education, a project already outlined in 1845 but that would be definitively polished only 24 years later. Every one of his works is a masterpiece: Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Salammbô, The Temptation of St. Anthony, Bouvard and Pécuchet, not to mention the Three Tales, which are somewhat the compressed version of the three novels (A Simple Heart → Madame Bovary; The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller → The Temptation of St. Anthony; Hérodias → Salammbô). For him, 5 stars for life.