Philippe and Joseph Bridau are extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier. Adored by their mother, Agathe, he is none the less a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother, Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - yet their mother is blinded to his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist. Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives unaware that she is being cynically manipulated by her favorite child, but will she ever discover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family? A novel with strong autobiographical elements, The Black Sheep is a dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France.

Donald Adamson's translation captures the radical modernity of Balzac's style, while the introduction places The Black Sheep in context as one of the great novels of Balzac's renowned Comédie Humaine.