A book on the experience of reading Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie Humaine which recounts the process of Peter Brooks's own discovery of Balzac. This volume is a personal account of coming to terms with Balzac: moving from more classical and restrained authors to the highly-coloured melodramatic novels of the Human Comedy, which give us the dynamics of a new and challenging world on the threshold of modernity. It shows readers how to read, and to love reading, Balzac, and how to engage with his vast work.

"Brooks never ceases to intrigue readers by his deeply probing work of literary and critical scholarship." - Dana Vuckovic, French Studies