insight

Autobiographical and exceptionally romantic, „The Lily of the Valley” is an 1835 novel about love and society by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) and is one of his personal favorites among his innumerable novels. The creator of the „Human Comedy” brings his creative insight to a portrait of a lady and a love affair set in the Loire valley. It concerns the affection – emotionally...

With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky’s early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. „Poor Folk” is a short novel focused on a powerful exchange of letters between two bright and introspective individuals living in difficult circumstances in 19th century Saint Petersburg who are in...

Immerse yourself in the inner workings of a quaint French village in this charming novel from Honoré de Balzac, an early master of literary realism. The work was dedicated to Balzac’s brother in law, an engineer in the corps royal des ponts et chaussées, Eugene Midy de la Greneraye Surville. Brimming with finely observed details and Balzac’s trademark insight into human motivations and morality, „An...

Originally published in 1830, here we have perhaps Balzac’s best short work, named simply „Gobseck”. Gobseck is a marvelous sketch of a money-lender and miser in Paris during the early part of the nineteenth century who is a font of psychological insight when it comes to humankind’s greed, vanity and other dark motives. His philosophy of never helping anyone because „adversity is the greatest of all...