As colorful as the world he described, Balzac is the perfect subject for a relentless seducer whose successes were as spectacular as his catastrophes a passionate collector, inventor, explorer, and political campaigner a mesmerizing storyteller with the power to make his fantasies come true.

Those who know Balzac will not be able to put his book down those who don’t know him will rush from this biography to the literary treasures created by the writer Robb describes for us in prose that does justice to its subject.” ―Richard Marius, author of Thomas A Biography In the first major English biography of Honore de Balzac for over fifty years, Graham Robb has produced a compelling portrait of the great French novelist whose powers of creation were matched only by his self-destructive tendencies. Robb has given us a splendid tale, meticulously researched, lovingly put together, and beautifully told. As on Desert Island Discs, after early struggle, success just kind of suddenly arrives, helped by the fact that Balzac penned his own rave reviews in the papers, a common practice at the time.“Honoré de Balzac was one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived, and now at last he has a biography that tells his story in a way Balzac himself would have loved―with all the ambiguities, the flaws, the illusions and myths, the realities of street and salon, the loves and affairs, and above all the imperishable stories that still have the power to make us laugh out loud in one minute and weep in the next. Perhaps with those exams in mind, Robb devotes more effort to comment than narrative, so the book is sometimes hard to read and we never really know how Balzac became quite as famous as he did. Oddly it is one genuine aspect of his influence that Robb fails to mention. In Balzac everybody's character is written in their face, and he made the pseudo-science of physiognomy so popularly understood and respected, especially in relation to crime, that for generations the French police determined guilt by running measuring-calipers over the suspect and men were sent to the guillotine for no better reason than that their eyes were too close together. In other words Balzac is indeed dated, a very unmodern writer, which is probably why almost no one reads him any more except to mug up for exams.

Balzac graham robb