{"product_id":"death-of-balzac-book-octave-mirbeau-9781943813568","title":"The Death of Balzac","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere, presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of Octave Mirbeau's darkest works: a fictionalized account of the death of the giant of French letters, -HonorE de Balzac.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmong his journalistic endeavors, Mirbeau contributed a large number of short stories to the newspapers in the \u003cem\u003efin-de-siEcle \u003c\/em\u003eperiod, and he honed his skill in that kind of work to near-perfection. Many of his anecdotal short stories make the customary tokenistic pretences to be true, and there is a considerable gray area between his explicit works of fiction, and articles that represent themselves falsely as reportage. None of his other impostures of that -ambiguous kind, however, are quite as brazen or as seductively -persuasive in their deception as the triptych making up \u003cem\u003eThe Death of Balzac\u003c\/em\u003e, which, seen purely as a literary exercise, is a masterpiece of sorts, in terms of the persuasiveness of its mendacious execution and the elegance of its narration. It is a gripping and affectively powerful story, artful in its very atrocity; a prime specimen of the work of an exceptional writer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49584738992401,"sku":"GOR013717789","price":19.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50993541382417,"sku":"NIN9781943813568","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327996887313,"sku":"CIN1943813566G","price":16.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52143804547345,"sku":"NLS9781943813568","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1943813566.jpg?v=1751029273","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/death-of-balzac-book-octave-mirbeau-9781943813568","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}