Balzac's Paris: The City as Human Comedy

Balzac's Paris is a loving ode to the city, capturing its cafés, landmarks, avenues, and people in meticulously drawn portraits. Eric Hazan follows in Balzac's footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist's outsize boots, stopping for details that would be fixed in Balzac's photographic memory. It is an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 25 June 2024
Publisher: Verso Books

Balzac's vast Human Comedy, comprising ninety-one completed novels and stories, aimed to provide a comprehensive portrayal of contemporary French society and manners. Within this remarkable work lies a passionate ode to Paris and an unparalleled introduction to the first capital of the modern world. With meticulous attention to detail, Balzac lovingly describes the city's cafés, landmarks, avenues, and parks, capturing the essence of its inhabitants through countless meticulously drawn portraits. From lawyers to grisettes, journalists to concierges, usurers to salesmen, and speculators, Balzac's vivid descriptions bring the city to life. Balzac's approach to capturing the soul of Paris was not merely a tour of the city but an attempt to measure it through its finest literature. Eric Hazan, in his own exploration of the city, follows in Balzac's footsteps, traversing the city in the novelist's oversized boots, rushing between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistresses, and friends, pausing momentarily to be struck by a detail that would be forever etched in Balzac's photographic memory. Balzac's Paris is not merely a tour of the city but an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature.

Weight: 300g
Dimension: 219 x 149 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839767258