Synopses & Reviews
Honoré de Balzac’s great theme was money, and in his best-loved novel,
Old Goriot, he explored its uses and abuses with the particularity of a poet. A shabby Parisian boarding house in 1819 is the setting where his colorful characters collide. These include an elderly retired merchant called Old Goriot, who has bankrupted himself for the sake of his two rapacious, social-climbing daughters, Delphine and Anastasie; a mysterious and sinister conspirator named Vautrin; Victorine, a disinherited heiress; and a naive and impoverished law student from the country, Eugène de Rastignac.
Rastignac is appalled at first by the greed and corruption he finds in Paris, but he soon sets his sights on conquering high society. He joins forces with the array of schemers who surround him, while the suffering, self-sacrificing Goriot yearns in vain for his daughters’ love. The sprawling, vibrant, and turbulent Paris of the post-Napoleonic era is itself a major character in the novel, an emblem of the social upheaval that Balzac portrays so brilliantly. Old Goriot was the first of Balzac’s novels to employ his famous technique of recurring characters, and it has come to be seen as the keystone in his grand project, The Human Comedy.
Translated by Ellen Marriage
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Synopsis
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Daniel Adamson
Synopsis
In this novel of obsessive passion the author tells stories of Old Goriot and the ungrateful daughters he adores; young Rastignac, a country lad determined to make his way in Paris; and Vautrin, his satanic tempter. Their lives all cross in the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris.
Balzac's great theme was money, and he explored its uses and abuses with all the particularity of the masterful poet he was. Old Goriot, betrayed by rapacious doughters, and Rastignac, an ambitious provincial youth alive to his opportunities, form the twin foci around which the grasping Parisian society of the 1820's revolves, in this, his most economical and universally loved novels.
Introduction by Daniel Adamson
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Synopsis
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Daniel Adamson
Synopsis
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About the Author
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