Bibliotheque Du Xixe Siecle Series

Book 18

'My title speaks not merely of war, but also of the crumbling of a regime and the end of a world.'
Emile Zola

The penultimate novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, La Debacle (1892) takes as its subject the dramatic events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870-1. During Zola's lifetime it was the bestselling of all his novels, praised by contemporaries for its epic sweep as well as for its attention to historical detail.

La Debacle seeks to explain why the Second Empire ended in a crushing military defeat and revolutionary violence. It focuses on ordinary soldiers, showing their bravery and suffering in the midst of circumstances they cannot control, and includes some of the most powerful descriptions Zola ever wrote. Zola skilfully integrates his narrative of events and the fictional lives of his characters to provide the finest account of this tragic chapter in the history of France. Often
compared to War and Peace, La Debacle has been described as a 'seminal' work for all modern depictions of war.

Book 20

Le Ventre de Paris - Oeuvres Completes - Les Rougon-Macquart, III

by Emile Zola

Published 13 February 2014

Book 21

La conquete de Plassans

by Emile Zola

Published 1 January 1967

Book 33

La fortune des Rougon

by Emile Zola

Published 9 February 1971

Book 34

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.

Book 46

Lourdes

by Emile Zola

Published 30 September 1993

In this moving depiction of a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the master French realist has created a novel of vivid characters and subtle commentary on suffering and the belief in miracles as the last desperate refuge from pain. Based on his own trip to the fabled grotto, the novel follows a simple five-part structure corresponding to the five-day train trip from Paris to Lourdes and back. Zola's brilliant observational powers are at their best as he moves from character to character describing in great detail the physical effects of their illnesses, their hopes, beliefs, fears, and above all endurance. The great novelist himself makes a brief appearance in the story, disguised as a skeptical reporter whose probing questions embarrass a doctor in charge of verifying the alleged miracles. In the end, amidst the tumult of emotions whipped up by religious fervor a miracle of a sort does take place, a psychosomatic cure of a woman suffering from hysterical paralysis. To a few skeptical observers in the entourage the event is a predictable natural occurrence, but to the majority of simple believers it is proof of divine intervention. In our age of televangelists and faith healers, this story has lost none of its relevance.

Book 48

Pot-Bouille

by Emile Zola

Published 14 March 1972

Regarded as one of the best novels of the 19th century, Pot-Bouille strips away the facades of middle-class life and hypocrisy in a manner which outraged contemporary France, inciting scandal and court cases. This study edition contains both the text and a commentary upon it.

Book 53