Père Goriot

Book Description
In a grimy boardinghouse in a dismal Parisian neighborhood, Balzac sets the stage for his 1834 study of paternal love, greed, envy, and despair. Pêre Goriot tells the story of a nineteenth-century counterpart to King Lear, a father so blindly devoted to his undeserving daughters that his tragic realization??I loved them too much for them to love me at all??comes too late. This best-known of Balzac&#146s Comédie Humaine novels has all the stylistic elements one might expect: unnerving psychological analyses, vivid physical descriptions, acute observations of the rules governing Parisian society, disarming wit, and unbridled passion.

This excellent translation by British poet Henry Reed was originally published in 1962.