The Ball at Sceaux
Honoré de Balzac
Read by Bruce Pirie
The novella “The Ball at Sceaux” is part of Balzac’s great life work — the expansive fiction series titled “The Human Comedy.”
The central character is Émilie de Fontaine, youngest daughter of a noble but impoverished family in post-revolutionary France. Her hapless father hopes to find her a good marriage, but Émilie, spoiled and willful, has repeatedly turned away suitors. She has a list of requirements for any prospective husband, one of which is that he must, of course, be “the son of a peer of France.” (The peerage was an elite aristocratic distinction.) She holds firm to this resolve, but events have a way of turning out surprisingly.
Balzac was a master of irony and realism and his writings were hugely influential in the development of European fiction.
- Summary by Bruce Pirie (2 hr 43 min)
Chapters
Section 1 | 37:14 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Section 2 | 31:26 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Section 3 | 28:59 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Section 4 | 40:18 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Section 5 | 25:42 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Reviews
excellent story and well read
Suzie
Congrats to the reader for taking on those difficult French names.