In the crowded boardinghouse of Paris, everyone is chasing something—money, love, status, or escape.
Among them lives Père Goriot, an aging former pasta maker who has sacrificed everything for his two daughters, women now glittering in high society who barely acknowledge the father who made their lives possible. Watching it all unfold is Eugène de Rastignac, an ambitious young law student determined to rise in a world where success often demands the death of innocence.
As fortunes rise and loyalties crumble, Rastignac must decide what he's willing to become in order to belong to Parisian society. Meanwhile, Goriot's devotion reveals the devastating cost of unconditional love in a city ruled by ambition.
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist and playwright and one of the founders of literary realism. He is best known for La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of interconnected novels and stories depicting French society after the fall of Napoleon. Père Goriot, first published in 1835, is one of his most celebrated works and a cornerstone of nineteenth-century European literature.
