Prometheus: The Life of Balzac

The immense energy and appetite for life, the struggle to make a ' picture ' of a whole society and world, the vast creative strength that worked as a physical hunger and passion , the working himself all night through endless coffee- drinking, the quest for social status and position, the provincial making his inroads into society, and beginning his long climb upwards, the apprenticeship in writing potboilers, the portrayal of obsession and the monstrous obsession of his own in writing, the financial turnabouts, and the precise depiction of intricate schemes and frauds, the acquaintanceship with large numbers of people, and the peopleing of his own work with one of the largest of all literary casts- the search for love and for wealth , the heartbreaking death in the middle of his enterprise , an already old fifty - one - All this and much else is depicted in Maurois outstanding biography of one of world's literature most ambitious and remarkable creators.