A few days after the coup attempt, too, I got a recall notice for a more obscure Balzac novel that I've had checked out of the public library for like forever, this one called "A Murky Business."
It took less than a minute for it to click for me that the novel depicts a coup attempt and so someone out there in the city had decided to read it, just like people had decided to read Camus's "The Plague" this summer.
. . .
Because they recently waived library fines in the city and I had a few days off and "A Murky Business" is on the short side for books, I decided to keep the novel and read it a lot and try to finish it off as quick as I could, which I ended up being able to do in like three days.
It had some nice insights and aphorisms about human behavior like all Balzac novels do, but it didn't have much insight into what we know of the coup attempt so far, to be honest. I think the historical distance and the difference with political systems and circumstances don't allow for much transferable knowledge like is the case with "The Plague," which had some nice insights into the way people react to a pandemic.
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