Balzac, Honoré de: Sarrasine, v.1. 30 July 2007
 

Honoré de Balzac, Sarrasine (1830), translated by Clara Bell.
This is a long-ish short story. I've added a couple of pictures, a TOC, and the French accents.

A young woman in a Parisian salon is startled by a sinister old man, to whom the hosts are very deferential. A young man tells her a story of sexual intrigue and 18th-century gender-bending to explain the old man's presence.

The story is part of Balzac's Comedie Humaine.
Later, in 1970, Roland Barthes used it to expound his structuralist theories in 'S/Z'.

I've made a mistake here. In the thread title, the author should be displayed as: 'de Balzac, Honoré' (or maybe even 'Balzac, Honoré de').
This was sheer absence of mind. Sorry Harry. I can't see how to edit the thread title.

You can't change it - I've done so. I've used "Balzac" as the surname, because I suspect that's what most people would look him up as, rather than the more strictly correct "de Balzac". Hope that's OK!

Thanks, Harry.

Thanks for this, Patricia - and welcome back.

Did you notice that Connect has what appears to be close to 50 (?) Balzac titles now? Perhaps it's a pet project of someone who works there.

I think (I could be wrong) that there are more Balzac titles available from Connect than any other author. (I'm thinking Trollope here, as Dickens did not write as prolifically as Balazac. Now, let's get some Thackerary.)

Don

this is great stuff! thanks.