Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist and critic, the founder of the Naturalist movement in literature. Among Zola's most important works is his famous Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893), which included such novels as L'Assomoir (1877), about the suffering of the Parisian working-class, Nana (1880), dealing with prostitution, and Germinal (1885). Roger Whitehouse has taught at the Sorbonne and at Bolton Institute, where he is a research fellow.
