Books with author Honore de Balzac

The Grandet family is violently out of the ordinary, since the sudden arrival of his late Cousin Charles Eugenie, recently orphaned and without money. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, leads to a direct conflict with her father, whose smart and financial success matched her determination to rebel. The moving story of Eugenie is placed in the background of provincial oppression and the functioning of the financial system following the French Revolution. It is both a fascinating portrait of private life and a vigorous fictional document of his age.

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 dressed daughters. Goriot's fate is intertwined with two other fellow boarders: the young social climber Eugene Rastignac, who sees a way to gain the acceptance and wealth he craves, and the enigmatic figure of Vautrin, who is hiding darker secrets than anyone. Weaving a compelling and panoramic story of love, money, self-sacrifice, corruption, greed and ambition, Father Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.