The Magic Skin (Paperback)

from mldg

I've only read a few books by Balzac, and I found them depressing. This book I liked, although it does have it's drawbacks. It's about a poor young man who overnight acquires the power to become rich. Not only rich, but he has the power to do or have anything he wants. There's one catch, as he us...

from foomy

A miserable, poor young man goes through tough times but turns to a rich man. Not quite a happy ending but extremely complex in itself.

from P_S_Patrick

Rich in realistic details and the atmosphere of its age (1830s Paris), this takes half a step up in the air from the comparatively grounded world of many of Balzac's other works, in order to see the nature of the world and its concerns all the better from this vantage. Power, money, fame, lust, s...

from P_S_Patrick

Rich in realistic details and the atmosphere of its age (1830s Paris), this takes half a step up in the air from the comparatively grounded world of many of Balzac's other works, in order to see the nature of the world and its concerns all the better from this vantage. Power, money, fame, lust, s...

from jkorta

I love this book! La peau de chagrin is one of the oddest of Balzac's novels (on par with La Recherche de l'Absolu and Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu), and one in which he lays bare his debt to romanticism, the movement of Victor Hugo which he will later attempt to shed as rigorously as possible (with ...