Lost Illusions

I’m reading a new translation of this Balzac novel that I last read about 30 years ago, and it’s a wonderful experience. I can’t assess the translation (I don’t know French, and I’m not doing a line-by-line comparison with my old Penguin edition), except to say that it’s good enough. The brilliant novel comes through in all its glory, and it’s just as accurate — psychologically, socially, aesthetically — as it was the day it was first published, in 1837.