Colonel Chabert

Honoré de Balzac · 1799–1850 · France

Originally Colonel Chabert (French)

Why it matters

A colonel presumed dead at Eylau returns years later to find his fortune seized and his widow remarried and unwilling to know him: Balzac's shortest, bleakest work, a novella about how completely the living can erase the dead.

At a glance

Short and tightly focused: a fast, unambiguous novella.