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About this book

"One of Balzac's most celebrated tales, The Unknown Masterpiece is the story of a painter who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius - or both. This work, which has served as an inspiration to artists as various as Cezanne, Henry James, Picasso, and New Wave film director Jacques Rivette, is, in critic Dore Ashton's words, a "fable of modern art."". "Published here in an outstanding new translation by the poet Richard Howard, The Unknown Masterpiece appears, as Balzac intended, with Gambara, a grotesque and tragic novella about a composer undone by his dreams."--BOOK JACKET.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Honoré de Balzac

20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac