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Lead book review

Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy

The drama of the street is a constant theme, though Balzac himself took most pleasure in the city’s ‘gloomy passages and silent cul-de-sacs between midnight and two in the morning’

22 June 2024

9:00 AM

22 June 2024

9:00 AM

Balzac’s Paris: The City as Human Comedy Eric Hazan

Verso, pp.200, 15.99

Open one of the major novels by Honoré de Balzac and you are likely to encounter a sentence such as this, from Cousin Bette: ‘Towards the middle of July, in the year 1838, one of those vehicles called milords, then appearing in the Paris squares for the first time, was driving along the rue de l’Université.’

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