Sarrasine

Sarrasine (1831) is a novella by French author Honoré de Balzac. Written as part of his La Comédie humaine sequence, Sarrasine is one of Balzac’s earliest works published without a pseudonym and helped to establish his reputation as a serious writer and distinguished member of Parisian high society. Noted for its controversial exploration of homosexuality and castration, Balzac’s novella would become the subject of Roland Barthe’s groundbreaking work of literary criticism, S/Z (1970).

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