Germinal

by Emile Zola

Published 1 December 1956
The novel's central character is ...tienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the forbidding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior - he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit. ...tienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as ...tienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions.

L'Assommoir

by Emile Zola

Published 1 July 1951
Lantier and Gervaise are fresh from the south, making a new life in Paris. But Lantier soon succumbs to urban degeneracy and abandons her. Gervaise, marries Coupeau the roofer and strives to realise her dream of running her own laundry. Hardship, however, is never far away. The text is here accompanied by an introduction, notes, selected criticism, text summary and a chronology of Zola's life and times.

Les Trois Villes

by Emile Zola

Published 3 October 2008

L'Oeuvre

by Emile Zola

Published 20 February 1968

La Fortune Des Rougon

by Emile Zola

Published 1 August 1981

La terre

by Emile Zola

Published 16 April 1970


Therese Raquin

by Emile Zola

Published 1 April 2012

Nana

by Emile Zola

Published December 1957
Nana tells the story of the rise of Nana Coupeau from a street prostitute to a high class cocotte (courtesan) during the final years of the Second French Empire. Through her performance in La blonde Venus, a fictional operetta, she attracts the attention of society and proceeds to destroy every man that she encounters. Nana is the ninth volume of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series and was published in 1880. The novel depicts the moral corruption that Zola believed was the cause of the downfall of the Second Empire.

La fortune des Rougon

by Emile Zola

Published 9 February 1971





Contes À Ninon

by Emile Zola

Published 19 June 2010




Le Ventre de Paris

by Emile Zola

Published 1 January 1979

Nouveaux Contes à Ninon

by Emile Zola

Published 22 November 2012