Balzac's Lives

Author: Peter Brooks

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $37.99 AUD
  • : 9781681374499
  • : New York Review of Books, Incorporated, The
  • : New York Review of Books, Incorporated, The
  • :
  • : 0.368317
  • : January 2021
  • : ---length:- '8.5'width:- '5.75'units:- Inches
  • :
  • : 32.99
  • : January 2021
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Peter Brooks
  • :
  • : Paperback
  • : 2005
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • : 304
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9781681374499
9781681374499

Local Description

January 2021

Description

Peter Brook's Balzac's Lives is a biography like no other, a vivid and searching portrait of the great novelist that is based on a close examination of the extraordinary characters that throng his work. More than anyone, Balzac invented the nineteenth-century novel, with its interwoven plots and diverse and overlapping realities, political, economic, domestic, psychological; indeed, Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac invented the nineteenth century! It was, in any case, above all the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters he dreamed up and made flesh--entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes--that allowed Balzac to bring to life the dynamic forces of the new era that ushered in our own. Brooks singles out the capitalist Gobseck, the aspiring writer Lucien de Rubembre, the ambitious politican Rastignac, the gay criminal mastermind, Collin, among others, to disclose the secret workings of a great writer's inner world.