French Classics PDF EPUB Audio

The Magic Skin

First published: 1831
Pages: 239

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Listen to The Magic Skin Audiobook Free

Read by James E. Carson · 11 h 28 min · 11 parts

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Section 01
63:05
Section 02
64:20
Section 03
65:00
Section 04
64:56
Section 05
65:31
Section 06
66:29
Section 07
67:01
Section 08
64:24
Section 09
65:38
Section 10
64:55
Section 11
37:04

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About this book

Raphaël de Valentin, a penniless young man on the edge of death, wanders into a Paris curiosity shop and leaves with a scrap of wild-ass skin that grants any wish its owner speaks aloud. The catch is fatal: with every desire fulfilled the skin contracts, and so does the span of his own life. Balzac turns this bargain into a meditation on how longing consumes us, weighing raw appetite against the plain will to endure. Salons, gambling dens, and a doomed love affair carry Raphaël toward the limit he keeps trying to outrun. One of the cornerstones of the Comédie humaine, it fuses fable with social realism.

About the author

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist whose vast Human Comedy, a connected series of novels and stories, is a monument of literary realism and one of the great achievements of world literature.