James Campbell

Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy

The drama of the street is a constant theme, though Balzac himself took most pleasure in the city’s ‘gloomy passages and silent cul-de-sacs between midnight and two in the morning’

View of the Pont-Neuf, Paris, by Giuseppe Canella, 1832. [Getty Images]
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  • Balzac’s Paris: The City as Human Comedy

    Eric Hazan

    Verso, pp. 200, £15

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