Father Goriot

Father Goriot (1835) is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. An early work in his La Comédie humaine sequence, Father Goriot has since become one of Balzac’s most critically and commercially successful novels. It contains several characters who appear throughout his other books and is considered to be the first novel in which he perfected his hallmark realist style.

The novel, set in Paris, follows Eugène de Rastignac, a young law student who lives at a boarding house owned by a widow...