Father Goriot

Honoré de Balzac's 1835 masterpiece dissects the anatomy of a father's ruin. Jean-Joachim Goriot, once a prosperous noodle merchant, has squandered his fortune on two daughters who have married into aristocracy and now regard him with embarrassment and disdain. When young Eugène de Rastignac arrives at the shabby Maison Vauquer boarding house, a young man hungry for success in Paris, he witnesses something that will haunt him: the old man's pathetic devotion, his midnight visits to deliver money his daughters won't accept in person, his slow descent into poverty and death. This is Balzac at his most ruthless, excavating the tender horror of unconditional love repaid with contempt. The novel pulses with the desperate energy of a city where everyone is climbing or falling, where youth sells itself for connections, and where a father's heart can be broken on the altar of social ambition.