Le père Goriot

Le Père Goriot (eng: Old Goriot) is a novel written by Honoré de Balzac. It is one of the series of novels to which Balzac gave the title of "The Comedy of Human Life." It is a comedy, mingled with lurid tragic touches, of society in the French capital in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The leading character in this story is, Old Goriot, and the passion which dominates him is that of paternity. In the picture which Balzac draws of Parisian life, from the sordid boarding-house to the luxurious mansions of the gilded aristocracy in the days of the Bourbon Restoration, the author exhibits that tendency to over-description for which he was criticised by his contemporaries, and to dwell too much on petty details.