Alain-Fournier's bittersweet novel of youthful ardour and longing is the story of Meaulnes and his search for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, our search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood. His beautiful heroine Yvonne is based on the real-life love of the brilliant young author, killed in the First World War after writing this, his only novel.
"Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?" This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel. Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.
This is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. It is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for money. The detailed descriptions of both affluence and squalor in the Paris of 1819 are an integral part of the drama played out by a wide range of characters, including the sinister but fascinating Vautrin. Unquestionably one of Balzac's finest novels, Pére Goriot still has the power to move the modern reader.
Édition établie par Philippe Berthier - Chronologie par Bernard Degout