Colonel Chabert

                                                             Like some other book bloggers I recently got a lovely parcel of books from Hesperus Press. I'd deliberately asked for books I wouldn't normally buy or read, including one by the great French novelist Honore de Balzac. This isn't it, actually, as the one I wanted wasn't immediately available -- a good thing, as it turned out, since I got the chance to read this one instead and am very glad I did. I'd never read de Balzac before, though I vaguely knew of him as an influence on Dickens, which even from dipping my toes in here I can easily see that he was. This delightful little book -- only 83 pages of story -- is probably best described as a novelette, much as I hate that coy-sounding term. But my goodness, de B certainly packs a lot into those 83 pages. Written in 1832, it tells the story of an old soldier, the Colonel C of the title, who, after a heroic military career, is declared dead following a battle in 1807. His young and beautiful wife claims her pension and his estate and, now a wealthy woman, remarries well and has two children. But suddenly one day into a solicitor's office in Paris comes an old, decrepit man in a worn-out army greatcoat, claiming to be none other than Colonel Chabert  himself. The story of his survival -- having been cast into a mass grave -- and his subsequent struggle to keep alive while living in direst poverty in various European countries, is almost incredible, but the young solicitor is excited by the case and takes it on. Eventually he manages to bring Chabert and his former wife together for a discussion of their situation, but matters do not take the expected course. This is a powerful, moving and very thought-provoking story, and though it has tragic overtones, also says something very profound about human beings and the survival of the spirit against almost impossible odds. 
I have, for a long time, had a resistance to reading literature in translation. I've always had the feeling that too much is lost if you substitute other words for those chosen by the writer. But this is obviously a short-sighted view in many ways since it means I haven't read a lot of things I should have read. So I welcome the advent of these lovely Hesperus Press books, many of which are, as Hesperus points out, 'little known in the English speaking world'.