The Conscript, a short story by Honoré de Balzac

Written by Honoré de Balzac

Narrated by Paul Spera

Honoré de Balzac is one of the most renowned French novelists. His magnum opus, La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy) is a panorama of life in France in the years after the fall of Napoleon; his keen observation of detail, subtle psychology and unfiltered representation of society gave him his place as one of the founders and great masters of realism in European literature. His characters are complex, morally ambiguous and utterly real. The Conscript is one of the stories from the great collection making up the Human Comedy; it captures the human cost of revolution in a terribly touching way. Madame de Dey is a noble, rich widow whose son, an officer in the dragoons, has chosen to follow the Princes into exile. She remains behind in a precarious position to look after his fortune. She is now awaiting her son's arrival in disguise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Astorg Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9782821113039

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.