Book of a lifetime: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

From The Independent archive: Russell Kane has spasms of erotic delight as he recalls the forbidden ‘first great modern novel’ – an exquisite balance of literary perfection, poeticism and detached irony

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was tried and acquitted on charges of ‘immorality’ following the publication of ‘Madame Bovary’ (Getty)

After sneaking onto a literature degree via a comprehensive, I found myself nonplussed by the rules and exclusions.

Authors from the English-speaking canon were permitted for my relish. Arbitrarily, so were the Russians. Ladlefuls of Tolstoy, Gogol and Dostoevsky dribbled down my chav parvenu chin. However, stuck in slow recovery from my adolescence and being told certain things were “off limits”, I suddenly desired only those. I mean, of course, French books.

It pleased me in a 19th-century way that “French authors were forbidden”. I didn’t speak French, wasn’t studying it, but, et alors, Flaubert is the master: the writer of the first great modern novel; the author of Madame Bovary.