Colonel chabert (Le) (ETONNANTS CLASSIQUES) - Softcover

Honore De Balzac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2080720074 ISBN 13: 9782080720078

Publisher: Flammarion, 1999

Synopsis

159pages. 18x11x1cm. Poche. Chaque maison cache un secret, les murs ont des oreilles mais la bouche cousue. Il faut poser longtemps la joue contre leur sein, ccmme un docteur fiévreux, pour les entendre respirer. A Dun-le-Palestel, dans la Creuse, la maison de famille du narrateur en a si gros sur le c?ur et tant à dire qu'on va la confesser, pièce après pièce, l'écouter se raconter, souvenirs dérangés, vérités arrangées, les choses et les gens tels qu'ils furent, les échos et les ombres qu'il en reste. Elle finira bien par lâcher cequ'elle sait. Elle sait l'histoire d'un père qui, lui, avait choisi de se taire.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Balzac once referred to art as "nature concentrated". And nowhere did his own art achieve such a rarefied state as in Colonel Chabert - one of the celebrated "Scenes from Private Life" from La Comedie Humaine. Chabert is among Balzac's most tragic heroes: a decorated Napoleonic War veteran believed to have been killed in battle. Severely disfigured, the Colonel, returns to Paris as if risen from the grave. There he finds his wife remarried, his pension gone, and his name linked nostalgically to the faded days of Empire. Employing a young lawyer named Derville, Chabert finds an ally to negotiate the labyrinthine system of Restoration justice; but as Derville plays the game of law and intrigue, we discover why Balzac himself thought that most post-Revolutionary politics were plagued with corruption. Chabert, despite his dignity, his history, his status as a fallen warrior, is no match for a society driven by the wiles of lawyers.

About the Author:

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), born in Tours, ranks among the great masters of the novel. In 1816, he began studying law at the Sorbonne, but after receiving his license in 1819 he decided to abandon it for literature. By the time of his death, he had written over one hundred novels, novellas, and plays, many of them part of his greatest work, La Comedie humaine -- a reproduction of the French society of his time, picturing in precise detail more than 2,000 characters from every class and every profession.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flammarion
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 2080720074
• ISBN 13: 9782080720078
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 160