A French soldier escapes captivity and stumbles into something stranger than war: solitude, survival, and a wild intimacy with a panther in the sands of Egypt.
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a novelist, obsessive chronicler, and architect of La Comédie Humaine--his vast, teeming portrait of French society. He wrote with feverish speed and forensic precision, capturing ambition, love, cruelty, and delusion in all their human excess.
