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The Black Sheep

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Black Sheep
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Honore de Balzac
Translated by Donald Adamson
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:352
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreClassic fiction (pre c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9780140442373
ClassificationsDewey:843.7
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 27 May 1976
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but their mother is blinded to his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist. Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives on unaware that she is being cynically manipulated by her own favourite child, but will she ever discover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family? A dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France, The Black Sheep compellingly explores is a compelling exploration of the nature of deceit.

Author Biography

Balzac was born in 1799, the son of a civil servant. At the age of thirty - heavily in debt and with an unsucessful past behind him - he started work on the first of what were to become a total of ninety novels and short stories that make up The Human Comedy. He died in 1850. Translated with an introduction by Donald Adamson