The complete online text of Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.

Had Balzac been a less masterful novelist, the disreputably profligate fraud in him might have overwhelmed his artistry. Still, the other Balzac, the artist, is tainted by his well-earned reputation for what has been called artistic license or dishonesty...

The French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was the first writer to use fiction to convey the total social scene prevailing within one country at a particular period in its history. Commonly regarded as the founder of social realism, he also...

Apropos French novelists, has made it to the screen. As adapted by Jean Cosmos and Yves Angelo, and directed by the latter, this minor Balzac novel proves a major cinematic achievement. Angelo, a gifted cinematographer whose directorial debut this is, will be recalled...

Human beings are alone in imagining their own deaths; they are unique in their need to remember the dead and to keep on imagining them. Central to this act of memory is the name of the deceased, that familiar formula of identity by...