Émile Zola

"Nana is probably the most famous character in Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel that bears her name, published in 1880, is the ninth volume in the series. It consists of a number of episodes, or tableaux, in the short but spectacular life of Ana Coupeau, the fourth child of Gervaise Macquart. We first saw her as a young girl in L'Assommoir (1877), her father an abusive alcoholic, her mother Gervaise reduced to a similar degraded state. She works as...

The fourteenth novel in a twenty book series collectively entitled, "Les Rougon-Macquart, L'Œuvre" was first translated into English in 1886, the title having since been rendered "The Masterpiece". Set in France's Second Empire, the story of naturalist painter Claude Lantier is believed to be a highly fictionalized account of Zola's friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne. The fictional artist of Zola's Bohemian world, Lantier, strives to complete...

Une édition de référence de Pot-Bouille d'Émile Zola, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « — De grâce! n'en parlons plus, finit par dire Octave. Vraiment, ça ne vaut pas la peine... Madame, votre café est exquis, je n'en ai jamais bu de pareil. Elle rougit de nouveau, et si fort, que ses mains elles-mêmes devinrent roses. — Ne la gâtez pas, monsieur, dit gravement M. Vuillaume. Son café est bon,...

La Conquête de Plassans est un roman d'Émile Zola publié en 1874, le quatrième de la série Les Rougon-Macquart. Un prêtre bonapartiste originaire du diocèse de Besançon, l'abbé Faujas, est envoyé à Plassans par le pouvoir pour la reconquérir. À son arrivée, il est logé chez François Mouret, un commerçant retraité. Celui-ci, son épouse Marthe, leurs trois enfants et leur bonne vivaient seuls jusqu'alors dans la maison. Marthe et...

Lourdes (1894) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. Lourdes is the first installment in Zola's celebrated Three Cities Trilogy. Published toward the end of Zola's career, the trilogy is an ambitious, sweeping study of one man's struggle with faith in political, religious, and social life. Following his protagonist Abbé Pierre Froment, Zola provides a striking portrait of the soul of modern man in crisis with itself and with an ever-changing world....

Against the backdrop of political and legal corruption in Second Empire France, La Bête Humaine (1890) contrasts the technological advancements of the Machine Age with the primitive and timeless human impulse to possess through killing and to kill through possession. The lives of two railwaymen on the Paris to Le Havre line are fatally entwined by their love for the same woman in this shocking account of brutal violence, greed, revenge and repression....

Theresa Raquin follows life of a young woman, unhappily married to her first cousin by an overbearing aunt who may seem to be well-intentioned but in many ways is deeply selfish. Theresa's husband, Camille, is sickly and egocentric, and when the opportunity arises, Theresa enters into a turbulent and sordidly passionate affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent.

"Censored upon publication in 1871, out of print since the 1950s, and untranslated for more than a century, The Kill is a riveting story of a family, a city, and a civilization driven by desire, ambition, and greed. The ruthlessness of financier Aristide Saccard and the forbidden affair between his son, Maxime, and his second wife, Renee, explode against the kaleidoscopic background of Paris during that city's tumultuous emergence as a modern metropolis,...