Top ten novels about unfaithful wives

Piers Paul Read is the author of works of fiction, reportage, history, biography and journalism. He is best known for Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors published in 1974, but has won a number of literary awards for his novels. His new novel is Scarpia. One of the author's top ten novels about unfaithful wives, as shared at the Guardian:

The Red and the Black (1830) by Stendhal

Julien Sorel’s seduction of Madame de Rênal occupies only the first part of this brilliant novel but it is a link with the time of Tosca. Stendhal, as Henri Beyle, was an officer in the French army occupying Milan. He delighted in the lax morals of the Italians and documented them in his De l’Amour. Julian adulates the exiled Napoleon, and his seduction of the wife of his pompous employer is his revenge for Waterloo.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Red and the Black is among André Aciman five best books on lovers touching hands, John Banville's five best books on early love and the flush of infatuation, Warren Adler's five best books about ambition, and Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature.

--Marshal Zeringue