{"product_id":"9781839767258","title":"Balzac's Paris : The City as Human Comedy by Eric Hazan","description":"In 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.   To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail - the caf?s, landmarks, avenues, parks - and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.   Balzac 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.   More 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\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307599278453,"sku":"9781839767258","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781839767258.jpg?v=1762804509","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781839767258","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}