Exquisitely deploying the story-within-a-story narrative, 'Honorine' is a tale casting piercing insight into the fabric of the human condition.

Comtesse Honorine de Bauvan was married off to the Comte at the age of nineteen. After being unfaithful, she is abandoned by her lover when she falls pregnant. She leads a simple but comfortable life and earns a living by crafting artificial flowers. What she doesn't know is that her comfort is assured by way of her husband paying exorbitant prices to buy her flowers.

Described as a psychological novel that delves into the differences between a man's love and a woman's love, it is one of Balzac's more mature works. Guy de Maupassant, Flaubert and Emile Zola were naturalist writers who were directly influenced by Balzac.

A must-read for fans of the 2004 movie 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet which explores similar themes of lost love from a psychological perspective.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for his collection of novels and plays, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His detailed observation of humanity and realistic depiction of society makes him one of the earliest representatives of realism in Europe. He was a master-creator of complex characters that often found themselves in ambiguous moral dilemmas.