Captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. This title presents an account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.

One of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's great Comedie Humaine, 'Eugenie Grandet' (1833) is a story of family conflict, unrequited love and self-sacrifice set against the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Fontana Press. Roland Barthers reissue with new jacket.

The linguistic distillation of Barthes' system of semiology in which the Balzac novella Sarrasine is dissected to uncover layers of meanings and interpretations. Barthes' interpretation of language and meaning lies within the 20th-century structuralist mode, similar to that of Levi-Strauss.

The author examines the connection between literature and religious belief, in a wide group of writers, re-appraising the writing of authors from Thomas More to Jane Austen. He reads them against the grain of received opinion and relates them to questions of religious and philosophical belief.