World Classics (Abe Books)
6 total works
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.
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.
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.
