“The Horla”
French translation · edition credits: Albert M. C. McMaster, A. E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada and othersCollective credit in the supplied edition, not a verified individual-story attribution. Historical text not independently collated.
Certainty slips away
StorylineIn the longer, diary-form version of this story, an unnamed narrator records disturbances that resist explanation. Maupassant lets the familiar world become strange, inviting us to question both the evidence and the mind observing it.
“Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence?”
THE SHORT SHOT EDITION
Lovely house. Unsettling company.
- GenrePsychological horror
- Estimated reading time40–50 minutesStory · extras excluded
Short Shot edition on Amazon · opens in a new tab
At a glance
- Genre
- Psychological horror
- Mood
- A delicious shiver
- Version discussed
- 1887 (diary form)
- Author’s country
- France
- Translation · edition credit
- Albert M. C. McMaster, A. E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada and othersCollective credit in the supplied edition, not a verified individual-story attribution. Historical text not independently collated.
Read the opening · excerpt
May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying in the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plane tree that shades the whole of it. I like this part of the country and I like to live here because I am attached to it by old associations, by those deep and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and died, which attach him to the ideas and usages of the place as well as to the food, to local expressions, to the peculiar twang of the peasants, to the smell of the soil, of the villages and of the atmosphere itself.
THE EDITOR’S TAKE
AN UNSEEN PRESENCE
Why “The Horla”?
- The atmosphere is lovely.
- The narrator’s peace of mind?
- Less so.
- We love a story that makes the familiar feel just a little off, and Maupassant is exceptionally good at making us question what we think we know.
BEHIND THE STORY
About the author
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), a master of the modern short story, writes about desire, ambition and the unease beneath polite society. His major works include Bel-Ami, “Boule de Suif”, “The Necklace” and “The Horla”. His precision makes a small gesture carry a very large consequence.
More by Guy de Maupassant in our collection
A question to savor
What would convince you that something you cannot see is real?
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