The Human Comedy, La Comedie Humaine, Volume 1

Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His great work was a series of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which gives a picture of swathes of French society in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac had plenty of experiences to draw upon, he had been an apprentice in a law office, a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician and failed at all of these pursuits. The novels reveal his difficulties with all these careers.

Many of these books have been adapted for the screen and to this day they are a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.

This volume includes the first twenty-one works in La Comédie humaine, in their recommended reading order:

• Father Goriot
• The Chouans
• An Episode Under The Terror
• Vendetta
• The Recruit
• The Red Inn
• Thought And Act
• A Double Retribution
• Juana
• A Passion In The Desert
• The Exiles
• Almae Sorori
• Christ In Flanders
• Maitre Cornelius
• A Second Home
• An Historical Mystery
• At The Sign Of The Cat And Racket
• The Executioner
• Domestic Peace
• Louis Lambert
• The Alkahest