»Det ligger ett hus vid rue de Paris i Douai vars utseende, inre planering och detaljer bättre än något annat har bevarat den gamla flamländska byggnadsstil som så naturligt ansluter sig till det patriarkaliska levnadssättet i denna landsända; men innan jag närmare beskriver det, bör jag k[...]
Une edition de reference du Colonel Chabert de Honore de Balzac, specialement concue pour la lecture sur les supports numeriques. Les mains taient tendues vers la mre, et les deux voix enfantines se mlaient. Ce fut un tableau soudain et dlicieux !- Pauvres enfants ! s'cria la comtesse en ne retenant[...]
This is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. It is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for money. The detailed descriptions of both affluence and squalor in the Paris of 1819 are[...]
?Bette is a wronged soul; and when her passion does break, it is, as Balzac says, sublime and terrifying,? wrote V. S. Pritchett. A late masterpiece in Balzac?s La Comédie Humaine, Cousin Bette is the story of a Vosges peasant who rebels against her scornful upper-class relatives, skillfully turnin[...]
Considered a founder of the realistic school of fiction, prolific French novelist Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote in meticulous detail, depicting ordinary and undistinguished lives in tales that nevertheless abounded in melodramatic plots and violent passions. This dual-language volume includes s[...]
Eugene Rastignac, a young law student living in a boarding house, meets fellow lodger, Goriot, a ruined merchant who receives occasional secret visits from his daughters[...]
"Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are." This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein's erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honore de Balzac's "The Human Comedy." Balzac uses them as a connecting thread in his[...]
Limite jusqu'alors a quelques manifestations ponctuelles, le procede du retour des personnages d'un roman a un autre devient, a partir du Pere Goriot, un des ressorts de la creation balzacienne.[...]
A gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, Honore de Balzac's "Cousin Bette" is translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in "Penguin Classics". Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially su[...]
His elegantly-crafted tale of sibling rivalry, Honore de Balzac's "The Black Sheep" is translated from the French with an introduction by Donald Adamson in "Penguin Classics". Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and [...]
Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has[...]
Twelve stories are representative of the tragic, melodramatic, sentimental, pathetic, and comic aspects of Balzac's art and testify to his keen sense of irony when observing the human condition[...]
Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipation and restraint, in a novel that is powerful in its symbolism and realistic depiction of decadence.[...]
Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dress[...]
'This is as much a mystery as the Immaculate Conception, which of itself must make a doctor an unbeliever.' A stunning pair of short stories about faith and sacrificial love. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and d[...]
'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?'
This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet[...]
'What holds sway over this country without morals, beliefs, or feelings? Gold and pleasure.' Sexual attraction, artistic insight, and the often ironic relationship between them is the dominant theme in the three short works collected in this volume. In Sarrasine an impetuous young sculptor falls in[...]
'Who possesses me will possess all things, But his life will belong to me...' Raphael de Valentin, a young aristocrat, has lost all his money in the gaming parlours of the Palais Royal in Paris, and contemplates ending his life by throwing himself into the Seine. He is distracted by the bizarre arr[...]