Colonel Chabert

A soldier rises from the dead — only to find his place already filled. Colonel Chabert, a hero of Napoleon’s wars, was left for dead on the frozen field of Eylau. After years of wandering, he returns to Paris horribly scarred, unrecognizable, and stripped of everything he once owned. His fortune has been divided. His wife has remarried a powerful aristocrat. And no one — least of all the law — seems willing to believe he is who he says. In this taut, emotionally fierce novel, Honoré de Balzac maps the collision between a man’s yearning for justice and a society that prefers the comfort of a convenient lie. Faithfully retold in fresh, contemporary English, Colonel Chabert speaks directly to our own questions about identity, memory, and the cost of being inconvenient. Part of Timeless Classics.