Books in the The Human Comedy: Scenes from Provincial Life series

Lucien Chardon is a young man who wants nothing more than to become a notable poet. He lives in a small village, and it is not the place for an aspiring writer. When a married lady Madame de Bargeton offers Lucien help, he is more than ready to move to Paris.Paris, however, is not an easy place either. There might be more possibilities, but at the same time the big city and it’s societies can be more cruel than Lucien could have ever imagined.‘Lost Illusions’ is an intriguing novel written by Honoré de Balzac.Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French writer. He was born in Tours, but moved to Paris when he was a teenager. The best known works of his include ‘Father Goriot’ and ‘Cousin Bette’. Balzac’s writing style is realistic, and he also wrote plays. Besides writing he worked as a journalist and critic.

'Eugenie Grandet' is one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's 'The Human Comedy' cycle. The dreary Grandet household, inundated by the overwhelming greed and miserliness of Grandet himself, is rudely awakened from its suffocating bleakness by the arrival of young Eugenie's elegant and coiffed Parisian cousin Charles. Newly orphaned and without a cent to his name. Eugenie Charles' arrival is a light at the end of the tunnel and the start of an amorous blossoming. For the provincial Midas Grandet, it's the perfect opportunity to test the limits of his callousness. Little does Eugenie suspect, Grandet will not be the last unscrupulous individual close to her that she will have to grapple with.An extraordinarily incisive, moral yet entertaining story struck by tragedy, Balzac's 'Eugenie Grandet' presents a scathing social critique of provincial attitudes and greed in the aftermath of the French Revolution that still remains relevant today. It summons to mind the Charles Dickens classic 'Oliver Twist', but infused far more strongly with Balzac's trademark scathing sardonic wit. -