"The possession of power, no matter how enormous, does not bring the knowledge how to use it." Raphael, a failed writer, deep in debt, and unrequited in love, is about to take a suicidal plunge into the Seine River. Just in ...

Honore de Balzac, who is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European fiction, first entered the mainstream with The Magic Skin, a fable-like tale delineating the excesses and vanities of contemporary life.