Part of La Comédie Humaine, book 41
First published 1847
Eugène de Rastignac arrives in Paris as a poor law student with grand ambitions. He becomes entangled in the city's high society through his distant cousin, Madame de Beauséant, while living in a shabby boarding house run by Madame Vauquer. There he meets the mysterious lodger Vautrin, a charismatic criminal who offers Rastignac a shortcut to wealth through murder and manipulation. Vautrin proposes that Rastignac court Victorine Taillefer while Vautrin arranges her brother's death, making her an heiress. As Rastignac navigates between the glittering salons of the aristocracy and the scheming underworld of his boarding house, he must choose between honest struggle and Vautrin's corrupt path to success. The young man finds himself torn between his moral conscience and his burning desire to join the ranks of wealthy Parisian society, while police agents close in on Vautrin's true identity.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, moral-dilemma, rags-to-riches
Setting: Paris
Period: 19th-Century
554 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: violence