The Vendetta

Fans of 'The Godfather' trilogy and 'The Sopranos' will know a thing or two about vendettas.

In Honore de Balzac's ´The Vendetta´, tragic consequences are laid bare. What begins as a love story between two Corsican immigrants, Ginevra and Luigi, soon becomes a tale of misery.

Luigi is the sole survivor of a blood feud with Ginevra's family. And Ginevra's father Bartolomeo is determined to finish the job by killing Luigi.

However, when the love-sick couple marries, he has to stay his hand - but he cuts them off, leaving them poverty-stricken.

As Bartolomeo has an epiphany, his daughter is locked in a life-and-death struggle as she gives birth. Will she survive? And will her father get the chance to make things right?

'The Vendetta' is an excoriating attack on the nature of honour and a tale of tragic romance that calls to mind 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for a sequence of novels, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His signature style was a warts-and-all representation of post-Napoleonic French life, rich in detail and featuring complex, unfiltered characters.

The style means Balzac is regarded as one of the pioneers of European literary realism. He is named as an influence on writers including Emile Zola, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Gustave Flaubert.

The first novel he published under his own name was 'Les Chouans' in 1829. In 1834 he hit upon the idea of grouping his novels together to record all of society. The result, over a period of years, was 'The Human Comedy', which comprised three categories: 'Analytic Studies'; 'Philosophical Studies'; and 'Studies of Manners'.