The Human Comedy

Selected Stories

Fiction & Literature, Psychological, Classics, Short Stories
Cover of the book The Human Comedy by Honore de Balzac, New York Review Books
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Honore de Balzac ISBN: 9781590176986
Publisher: New York Review Books Publication: January 21, 2014
Imprint: NYRB Classics Language: English
Author: Honore de Balzac
ISBN: 9781590176986
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publication: January 21, 2014
Imprint: NYRB Classics
Language: English

An NYRB Classics Original

Characters from every corner of society and all walks of life—lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks,  unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots,  and more—move through the pages of The Human Comedy, Balzac’s multivolume magnum opus, an interlinked chronicle of modernity in all its splendor and squalor. The Human Comedy includes the great roomy novels that have exercised such a sway over Balzac’s many literary inheritors, from Dostoyevsky and Henry James to Marcel Proust; it also contains an array of short fictions in which Balzac is at his most concentrated and forceful. Nine of these, all newly translated, appear in this volume, and together they provide an unequaled overview of a great writer’s obsessions and art. Here are “The Duchesse de Langeais,” “A Passion in the Desert,” and “Sarrasine”; tales of madness, illicit passion, ill-gotten gains, and crime. What unifies them, Peter Brooks points out in his introduction, is an incomparable storyteller’s fascination with the power of storytelling, while throughout we also detect what Proust so admired: the “mysterious circulation of blood and desire.”

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

An NYRB Classics Original

Characters from every corner of society and all walks of life—lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks,  unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots,  and more—move through the pages of The Human Comedy, Balzac’s multivolume magnum opus, an interlinked chronicle of modernity in all its splendor and squalor. The Human Comedy includes the great roomy novels that have exercised such a sway over Balzac’s many literary inheritors, from Dostoyevsky and Henry James to Marcel Proust; it also contains an array of short fictions in which Balzac is at his most concentrated and forceful. Nine of these, all newly translated, appear in this volume, and together they provide an unequaled overview of a great writer’s obsessions and art. Here are “The Duchesse de Langeais,” “A Passion in the Desert,” and “Sarrasine”; tales of madness, illicit passion, ill-gotten gains, and crime. What unifies them, Peter Brooks points out in his introduction, is an incomparable storyteller’s fascination with the power of storytelling, while throughout we also detect what Proust so admired: the “mysterious circulation of blood and desire.”

More books from New York Review Books

Cover of the book Things That Bother Me by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Curious Lobster by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Ooh-la-la (Max in Love) by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Journey Into the Past by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Pilgrim Hawk by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Fat City by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Sound of the One Hand by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Bad Side of Books by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Fox in the Attic by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Smith: The Story of a Pickpocket by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Slow Days, Fast Company by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book Ravan and Eddie by Honore de Balzac
Cover of the book The Return of Munchausen by Honore de Balzac
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy