The Human Comedy, La Comedie Humaine, Volume 1

Honor de Balzac (1799 - 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His great work was a series of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comdie humaine, which gives a picture of swathes of French society in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac had plenty of experiences to draw upon, he had been an apprentice in a law office, a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician and failed at all of these pursuits. The novels reveal his difficulties with all these careers.

Many of these books have been adapted for the screen and to this day they are a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.

This volume includes the first twenty-one works in La Comdie humaine, in their recommended reading order:

1. Father Goriot
2. The Chouans
3. An Episode Under The Terror
4. Vendetta
5. The Recruit
6. The Red Inn
7. Thought And Act
8. A Double Retribution
9. Juana
10. A Passion In The Desert
11. The Exiles
12. Almae Sorori
13. Christ In Flanders
14. Maitre Cornelius
15. A Second Home
16. An Historical Mystery
17. At The Sign Of The Cat And Racket
18. The Executioner
19. Domestic Peace
20. Louis Lambert
21. The Alkahest