Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), architect of the sprawling Comédie humaine, was a foundational realist who also wrote the fantastic. The Wild Ass’s Skin, in which a magic talisman grants wishes at the cost of the owner’s life, and tales like ‘The Elixir of Long Life’ and Séraphîta show his fascination with the supernatural and the philosophical, feeding the French tradition of the conte fantastique.