Fiction. Second Edition. Translated from the French by Anthony Rudolph. GILLETTE OR THE UNKNOWN MASTERIECE is one of Balzac's most brilliant and fascinating works, and one of the great short stories in European literature. It has been widely influential among painters and writers since its early editions, and speaks to our own days in unexpected ways. Anthony Rudolf has made the first complete translation into English in over eighty years. In a long accompanying essay he discusses the text as a love story, as a parable of writing told in terms of painting, and as a remarkable foreshadowing of certain later developments in art, such as the work of Giacometti. He also discusses the sexual, mythological, financial and other aspects of this extraordinary multilayered text, and vigorously contests the widespread view that Frenhofer is nothing but a failure and his painting nothing but a disaster. This 1999 reprint marks Balzac's bicentenary and Menard's 30th birthday.

Author City: PARIS FRA

Honoré de Balzac, produced a vast number of novels and short stories collectively called La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). He helped to establish the traditional form of the novel and is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time.