Old Goriot

De Balzac, Honore

ISBN 10: 0140440178 / ISBN 13: 9780140440171

Edité par Penguin Books, 1951

Former library book; Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. N° de réf. du vendeur G0140440178I3N11

Synopsis :

A witty and reflective study of the bourgeoisie after the French Revolution, and the two great human obsessions - love and money - Honoré de Balzac's Old Goriot is part of the immortal La Comédie humaine, translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in Penguin Classics.

Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals and social climbers - and everyone is out for what they can get. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees a potential plan to make a fortune: the two beautiful, aristocratic women who mysteriously come at night to visit the lonely old lodger Goriot. Could they bring him the status and acceptance he craves? In the city nothing is as it seems though. Soon Eugene gets out of his depth in a world of greed and obsession that he could never have imagined - one that can only end in terrible tragedy.

Marion Ayton Crawford's sparkling translation is accompanied by an introduction exploring Balzac's ability to create distinctive characters from all levels of societyas the new, ambitious middle classes replaced France's old imperial ways.

Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850) failed at being a lawyer, publisher, printer, businessman, critic and politician before, at the age of thirty, turning his hand to writing. His life's work, La Comédie humaine, is a series of ninety novels and short stories which offer a magnificent panorama of nineteenth-century life after the French Revolution. Balzac was an influence on innumerable writers who followed him, including Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe.

If you enjoyed Old Goriot, you might like Balzac's Cousin Bette, also available in Penguin Classics.

À propos de l'auteur: Balzac was born in 1799, the son of a civil servant. At the age of thirty - heavily in debt and with an unsucessful past behind him - he started work on the first of what were to become a total of ninety novels and short stories that make up The Human Comedy. He died in 1850.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Old Goriot
Éditeur : Penguin Books
Date d'édition : 1951
Reliure : Paperback
Etat : Good
Etat de la jaquette : No Jacket