Father Goriot (Annotated)

Father Goriot is one of the central novels of Balzac's vast Comédie humaine, a searching anatomy of Restoration Paris and its ruthless social hierarchies. Set chiefly in the shabby Maison Vauquer boarding house, the novel interweaves the tragic decline of the self-sacrificing Goriot with the moral education of the ambitious Eugène de Rastignac. Balzac's dense realism, documentary precision, and dr...