"Old Goriot" (French: Le Pere Goriot) is a novel by French novelist Honore de Balzac.
Goriot is a lonely
old man so obsessed by his love for his two married
daughters, who in turn don't return his affection. Goriot lives in a seedy Parisian boarding-
house of which the author Balzac carefully and meticulously describes everything in it as relates the inhabitants. The old man is forced to gradually sell his possessions, and even cuts down on food, if only to buy gifts and provisions for his two daughters. For all his lavished attention on them, the daughters treat him with contempt.
Everyone seems to despise old Goriot except for Rastignac, a student living in the same house. Goriot's death-bed scene is touching especially as he clutches Rastignac's hand thinking that his daughters have come to visit him at last. A moving passage provided by Balzac through his detailed descriptive prose that readers can clearly feel.