Cousin Bette (Everyman's Library Series) - Hardcover

Balzac, Honore De

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679406719 ISBN 13: 9780679406716

Publisher: Everymans Library, 1991

Synopsis

A hypnotic story of hatred, revenge and catastrophe in which Cousin Bette exacts a terrible price from the rich relations who use and humiliate her. This book portrays the world of post-Napoleonic France, where commercial greed and sexual debauchery are rampant among a demoralized ruling class.

Along with his wide descriptive range and the astute understanding of society for which he is celebrated, Balzac had immense psychological penetration. All these qualities are fully evident in his story of the ferocious dissembler Cousin Bette and the dense nineteenth-century Parisian milieu in which she plots a terrible revenge on her patronizing relatives.

Introduction by Michael Tilby; Translatoin by James Waring

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

About this title

Review:

Raine's translations restore Balzac to his passionate and efficient outrage upon the expectations of fiction. This best of his novels is worthy to be 'ours'--and now it is --Richard Howard

The novel exemplifies what Henry James described as Balzac s huge, all-compassing, all-desiring, all-devouring love of reality --V. S. Pritchett

About the Author:

A prolific writer, Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) is generally regarded, along with Gustave Flaubert, as a founding father of realism in European literature, and as one of France's greatest fiction writers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everymans Library
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0679406719
• ISBN 13: 9780679406716
• Binding: Hardcover