Honoré de Balzac, a pioneer of critical realism
A novel that starkly exposes the meanness and vulgarity of human nature.
A most Balzac-like work that foreshadows the direction of history with surprising insight.

“Yeah, it won’t matter if you cut out my heart.
“The severed heart pieces must also be my father’s heart.”

Eugène de Rastignac was a law student in his early twenties, born into a poor noble family.
He dreams of success and comes to Paris to study, but he lacks the talent or the means to succeed in Parisian society.
Then, with the help of his distant relative, the Viscountess de Beausejon, he entered Parisian society, a society completely different from the one he had been in until then.
Meanwhile, in the room next to Rastignac's boarding house lives Old Goriot.
Rastignac learns that he had made a fortune in the noodle business in his youth and that he was the father of the Countess of Restaut and the Baroness of Nuchingen, and he seeks to use this as a means of advancement for himself.
But compared to young people who sell their souls for success, he is rather innocent.
Young Rastignac meets various people and opens his eyes to Parisian society, humanity, success, and the world.

Balzac's masterpiece, "The Human Comedy," consists of approximately 90 novels and features over 2,000 characters set throughout France.
"Old Goriot" is a work that is located at the center of "Human Comedy."
He completed a mural of 19th-century French society by contrasting the gradual decline of the elderly bourgeoisie and the upward aspirations of the aristocratic youth within the network of various capitalist characters.
This work is the first attempt and completion of a modern project that breathes life and movement into a fictional world and transforms it into a real world.

Two days later, Poiret and Miss Mishono sat on a sunny bench along a quiet path in the botanical garden.
They were talking to someone who, to the medical student's eyes, naturally looked suspicious.
"Miss," said Mr. Gong behind him.
"I don't understand why you're hesitating, but Your Excellency, the Minister of the Royal Police...?" "What! Your Excellency, the Minister of the Royal Police...?" Poiret asked back.
"Yes, Your Majesty is also very interested in this matter," said Gongduero.
One would think it impossible for Poiret, a man of bourgeois virtue, who had been an official in the past, but whose head was empty, to listen calmly to the speech of a pensioner living in the Rue de Bufun, who called himself a policeman, and who, behind the mask of an honest man, began to show the face of a policeman from the Rue de Jerusalem.

--- p.224