{"product_id":"balzacs-paris-the-city-as-human-comedy","title":"Balzac's Paris: The City as Human Comedy","description":"Exploring Paris arm in arm with Balzac, nineteenth-century France’s most famous novelist and observer\n\nIn Balzac’s vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.\n\nTo this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail – the cafés, landmarks, avenues, parks – and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.\n\nBalzac gathered the elements of this Paris by sauntering through it. ‘To saunter is a science,’ he writes, ‘it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live.’ Eric Hazan follows in Balzac’s footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist’s outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistresses and friends, stopping for a moment, struck by a detail that would be fixed in Balzac’s photographic memory.\n\nMore than a tour of the city, Balzac’s Paris is an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 1839767251\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: DBV.1839767251.G\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Hazan, Eric\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly!  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Dream Books Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41873887625274,"sku":"DBV.1839767251.G","price":8.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/6011\/0138\/files\/1839767251-0.jpg?v=1793502980","url":"https:\/\/shop.dreambooksco.com\/products\/balzacs-paris-the-city-as-human-comedy","provider":"Dream Books Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}