This book collects two famous short stories by Chateaubriand. Atala is a tale told to the young Frenchman Rene by the elderly Natchez Chactas, relating how as a young man he was captured by the Muscogees and condemned to death by torture, but was saved by the love of the virtuous maiden Atala. Rene is told by Rene to Chactas, explaining why he left behind the sister he loved to find a new home in the American wilderness.
Together, these two stories established Chateaubriand's reputation as France's answer to Goethe, but just as The Sorrows of Young Werther seems cliche after two centuries, so too Atala and, to a lesser extent, Rene. Unlike Young Werther, however, Chateaubriand's stories appeal to a timeless standard to judge their protagonists.
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