About the book:

A historical psychological novel first published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy—yet who ultimately allows his passions to betray him.

André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the 20th century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, interior monologues) of the characters, and as a result he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.

(from wikipedia)