COLONEL CHABERT

Colonel Chabert ($9.95 paperback original; Nov. 26; 128 pp.; 0-8112-1359-5): Originally published in 1832 as part of its author's ``Scenes from Private Life,'' this energetic novella offers a virtually perfect introduction to Balzac's teeming ComÇdie Humaine: a vast fictional canvas on which professional men, peasants, whores, and members of the aristocracy, clergy, and military service memorably intermingle and influence one another's destinies. The blunt tale describes its eponymous hero's return home from the Napoleonic Wars (in which he is believed to have perished) and frustrated dealings with his remarried wife and a battalion of lawyers (the primary objects of several heavily satirical broadsides) who deny all his claims, provoking the haunting question ``Are the dead wrong to come to life again?'' Both Balzac's infuriating digressiveness and his matchless grasp of the individual submerged in, and overwhelmed by, society are vividly present in this strongly imagined and affecting story.