Pere Goriot

Reviewed by: Ahmad Aqeel Sarwar

Book: Pere Goriot Author: Honore de Balzac Translated by: Burton Raffel Published by: Norton & Company ISBN: 0-393-97166-x (pbk)

Burton Raffel is a distinguished professor of Humanities at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He is translator of many works and s awarded French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Pere Goriot is a classical novel by the famous pen of French novelist__ Honore de Balzac. It depicts the Post-Revolution Parisian life. The deterioration of society, morally and financially, is masterfully displayed by the story of an old man and his two daughters. All the characters in the novel tell of the problems of the 1820s France. Everyone is in vain search of satisfactory life. The old man, Goriot, struggles to fulfill the desires of his daughters. He puts everything at stake to give a happy life to his daughters. He is an ex-vermicelli maker who has enough money to lead a luxurious life but he denies himself every luxury to make his daughters settle in the aristocratic class. On the other hands the selfish daughters never think beyond their ambitious pursuits. They dont even meet their father because of his humble circumstances. Goriots desire to meet his daughters ends with his death in solitude. His daughters come after his death, not out of grief but to see what he has left for them. The novel is not the tragedy of an individual but the tragedy of a society or more appropriately of an age. The book is a fine rendering of a classic. Raffel gives us all of the lively, dramatic and colorful Balzac style. He remains faithful to the finest detail and it does not read at all like a translation. The book also contains commentaries from different critics on Balzac and his art.