The Human Comedy by Honore de Balzac

Bazac was a genius, a man who wrote prodigiously over a 20 year period, and perceived the darkest desires and motivations of human kind. He lived large, sought an even bigger life, and died young. This is supposed to serve as an introduction to that body of work,with short stories and two novellas. In some ways it delivers on this promise and in other ways it does not. On the up side, the works contain characters from every corner of society and all walks of life—-lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks, unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots, and more. This is definitely true to Balzac's form in his multivolume magnum opus, demonstrating that we are all on some level, exactly the same. His insights provided the inspiration and guided author's who were inspired by him, from Marcel Proust, to Henry James, to Dostoyevsky. After reading a bit more of Balzac than is contained within this novel, you can see his imprint on the writers who revered him. He is an incomparable storyteller’s fascination with the power of storytelling and I suspect if you read his entire opus, you would understand the human condition.