When the Basque dragoon Don José meets a Gypsy woman at the factory he is guarding, he is immediately ensnared by her wiles. After she is arrested for injuring a co-worker and he helps her to flee, he is imprisoned and demoted, but she repays him at their next meeting with a day of excess and a night of love. As Carmen continues to exert her spell, José is dragged further and further into a seedy world of smugglers, robbers, fiery passions and uncontrollable jealousy—one that he will find difficult to escape alive.

Carmen, the archetype of the amoral femme fatale, is Prosper Mérimée's highest creation, and a model for many subsequent literary heroines. First published in 1846, this story of crime and desire—here accompanied by another famous novella by Mérimée, The Venus of Ille—has been adapted into a number of dramatic works, including the famous 1875 opera of the same name by Georges Bizet.