Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (57)

The Worst Book I've Ever Had To Read
It's supposed to be a classic, right? Apparently, there's some greatness in there that I have missed, because reading it was TORTUROUS! There's no other word for it. It cried because I had to read it for a University presentation and I just couldn't get through the pages. It was such a bad book that from a group of five people, I was the only one who presented it because I was the only one who could go through the book. It was boring from the very beginning, with descriptions and more descriptions and way too many words to show a simple thing. But it gets worse. The characters seemed flat to me, the narration didn't go deep enough to see their thoughts and feelings about what was going on, just description and more description. So much description makes it gruesome. Do I really need to know the details about the color of the worker's phlegm? Do I need to know the form and consistency of the blisters in their hands?
Not only that, but the overall plot? It's tragedy after tragedy. People die, get trapped, more people die, people lose limbs, more people die. I mean, maybe it was supposed to be touching, but after the 3rd time it starts to get annoying. I really, really hated this book, even though I did ace my paper about it.

I can't believe there are no written accents!
I was looking forward to reading this classic French novel on my Kindle with my newly installed default Barron's French-English dictionary to help me along. But then I discovered that there are no written accents in the edition.

Don't buy this edition unless you like to see a denuded written version of the French language. Côté and Cote are actually different words in French.

A great disappointment. How do I get my money back for a Kindle book that says "French edition" but it is not in real French?

Suffering humanity, lessons of history
From the very start - with an icy wind blowing across a dark and desolate landscape - the author evokes a place with a story that is graphic and harrowing. Etienne Lantier arrives destitute at a mining pit at Montsou (which loosely means mountain of money) without any prospects but still with the energy of a youth. Stopping to find some warmth from the biting cold, he lingers long enough to find himself descending into the abyss of a coal mine. From that point he becomes entangled with the misfortunes of the Maheu family, who are caught in a vicious cycle of debt, hopelessly slaving away for starvation wages.

The events of the novel take place during the 1860s in France. The industrial revolution has commenced and a raw form of capitalism is the rule of the day - no needless government intrusion into the affairs of private industry. Children of a shockingly young age, about 10 years old, girls as well as boys, are sent down to work in the coal mines. Health and safety standards are set by the company; that is, by the local management, who are totally at the beck and call of a distant Board of Directors, who in turn are beholden to absent shareholders. Whenever an accident occurs, the company has nothing to prevent it from covering up whatever actually occurs. Labor is cheap and plentiful enough that given the choice of cutting the dividend when things get tough, the company will figure out a way to cheat the workers.

At this stage in history, industrial workers have only begun a desperate fight for their rights. The unfortunate part of it is that they have been so beaten down, so accustomed to being treated like cattle, that they tend to act accordingly. Outside of their labors, life is a constant obsession with food, drink, and sex. This habitual instinctual behavior and feeding of addictions not only degrades them but traps them all the more. The horse, Bataille, doomed to spend his life deep within the mine pit, is portrayed as showing about as much compassion and humanity as any of the miners. Etienne, the outsider without attachments, has hopes of galvanizingtheir better instincts by organizing a strike. But as the strike gains momentum, so does a sense of impending violence and tragedy. The miners have very little chance of getting significant concessions from the company, and though they doggedly struggle, their efforts to stave off starvation are costly. When they are pushed to the brink, horrible things happen.

Although this is a work of fiction, it is a valuable piece of history that contains lessons. It is clear that when there are only the most laissez-faire of laws - basically no government standards or oversight, the desperate and vulnerable get crushed by the rising tide of greed. Extreme conditions trigger extreme reactions, and all hell breaks loose.

Zola mines the depths of the human condition
"Germinal" is perhaps Zola's best known work, it is easy to see why.Without a doubt, this is one of the most stunning, brutal, honest, heart-breaking, and, at times, painfully beautiful, books in world literature.Centering on a French coal mining community in the 19th century, Zola mixes social commentary, political philosophy and keen psychological insight to create a story that can still move readers more than one hundred years after being published.While the suffering of the working-class characters is extreme, Zola is never melodramatic and never portrays one-dimensional characters or stock emotions.In the end, "Germinal" succeeds not so much as story about mining, labour strikes or human suffering, but as a portrait of the strenghts and weakness of the human spirit.I can't recommend this book highly enough and urge anyone seeking a deeper understanding of humanity to read "Germinal".

one of the best novels about the working class ever written
This is one of the main novels of the Rougon-Macquart series. Its main character is Etienne Lantier, who is one of the sons of Gervaise Macquart, the heroine of "l'Assommoir/the Drum Shop". The novel revolves around the coal mining community. The sharp contrasts between the poor and the rich are displayed in chapter II of part 1 and chapter I of part 2. Theere are two violent encounters between the rich and the poor in chapter VI of part 5 and chapter IV of part 7. However, the working class fails to overthrow its oppressors. In this novel one can clearly see Zola's negative attitude towards the revolutionaries... ... Read more

Product Description
Thérèse Raquin tells the story of a young woman, unhappily married to her first cousin by a well-intentioned and overbearing aunt. Her cousin, Camille, is sickly and selfish, and when the opportunity arises, Thérèse enters into a tragic affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent.
In his preface, Zola explains that his goal in this novel was to "study temperaments and not characters" and he compares the novel to a scientific study.Because of this detached and scientific approach, Thérèse Raquin is considered an example of Naturalism.
Thérèse Raquin is generally considered to be Zola's first major work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Very poor translation of a masterpiece
This is a great book by one of the greatest authors in the history of literature. But this translation is very poor and was done in the 1880s at the height of censorship. This publisher--which is amazon--downloaded a public domain translation and put a John Singer Sargent portrait of a rich American on the cover!!!The story is about an unattractive downtrodden French woman, not an heiress. This is a terrible case of marketing over substance. DO NOT ENCOURAGE creatspace to pawn off cheap inaccurate editions on the unknowing public.

Émile Zola: Thérèse Raquin
Overview

Thérèse Raquin tells the story of a young woman, unhappily married to her first cousin through the well intentioned motivations of her overbearing aunt Madame Raquin. Her cousin, Camille, has lived a sheltered life largely hampered by illness and the endless doting of his overprotective mother. As time passes, Camille becomes terribly self-involved and weds Thérèse on his mother's suggestion. The loveless marriage leaves our heroine alone and miserable, with the eventual culmination of a sordid love affair with Laurent, an old friend of Camille's that has dire consequences for all.

Discussion

Thérèse Raquin is Murphy's Law in the flesh. Everything that could, would, or should go wrong did and then some! The tragic tale is a study in human behavior and the remarkable lengths some will undertake to satisfy their cravings. Foolishly so of course, without giving thought to their actions or the ramifications that follow. On the surface, it's easy to assign blame to Laurent for his roguish character or Madame Raquin for her meddlesome influence, but I'm unable to do so. In my opinion, the seeds of discontent were sown long before the wedding took place. To understand the outcome, we must give credence to the events that brought Thérèse to the Raquin residence.

She's the orphaned daughter of Madame Raquin's brother, a French captain and an Algerian mother. After her mother's death, Thérèse's father brings her to live with her aunt. An initial question springs to mind and I'm left wondering why he's given the child away. One needn't be proficient in psychology to ascertain the long term affects this could have. It is my opinion that the abandonment and the lifestyle that ensued in its aftermath is where our heroine's unraveling begins. Although Madame Raquin was attentive to them both, it's clear her brand of parenting was too intrusive and stifled independence and real self-sufficiency in both characters. Madame was happiest when Camille and Thérèse remained in her company, within eyesight of course. The close proximity is understandable for younger children, but its continued practice for someone 21 years of age is a wee bit strange.

Protestations are glaringly absent in Camille and Thérèse. Both agreed to Madame's conspiracy and knowingly wed the other, devoid of the usual romantic undertones one might expect in a couple. Their love was amicable, familial in nature. The carnal aspects never developed. My commonsense compels me to ask why neither disagreed or held out for something more substantial. Perhaps their inability to do so is a reflection of poor self-esteem or the silent belief that a better suitor was not available. Whatever the case, their acquiesce would set the stage for the unfortunate events that followed.

There is one important caveat, and that relates to Camille's desire to move to Paris. His unwillingness to compromise was an interesting contradiction to the passivity we've observed thus far between he and Madame Raquin. Her protests fall upon deaf ears. Camille successfully relocates the household to a small shop in the Passage du Pont Neuf. The atmosphere is dismal and Thérèse is lonely and uninvolved. The days flow into the next and her relationship with Camille never improves. In some ways, she's traded one prison for another, only the second lies in the backdrop of Paris. Madame Raquin has adapted to the new surroundings and develops acquaintances that usually end with an evening of dominoes among friends. I'm a little amused by the references to dominoes. Its an accurate visual of the calamity brewing with our characters.

As always, here comes the bad part. Enter Laurent, the wannabe aristocrat castaway that longs for a life of comforts and spoils he can never secure. His unexpected meeting with Camille would be a turning point for all. Laurent eventually becomes a fixture at the Raquin's and astutely discerns Thérèse's lowly condition. In spite of the author's assurances that her demeanor was often masked, I disagree that her mood was impossible to grasp. It's my belief that the members of the Raquin household had little reason to notice. Oblivious and ignored, it was only a matter of time before a respite was sought. She found refuge in Laurent's arms and the dam sprang open.

In my opinion, this is the crux of the tale and one of the important reasons why it is an accurate depiction of Naturalism. We've often heard the slogan, "The dead never remain buried." Our heroine is alive, free from the confines of repression and lethargy, and she revels in it! She's swept away and avoids the voice of reason tapping fitfully on her shoulder for a time, until his message became glaringly clear. Thérèse is torn and stands at a crossroad between duty and freedom. The latter is a mirage of course, but in her mind its real and a far better choice than the life she shares with Camille. You cannot serve two masters, and she chooses Laurent over her husband, foolishly hoisting him upon a perch, he becomes the white knight destined to save her from the marriage that's entombed her until now.

The pair enjoy a torrid affair, propelled by emotion charged love that cannot bear another moment apart. The little shop of horrors continues to churn, and the two move further away from shore. Dismantling their conscience and connection with societal norms in the process. Nothing else matters but this - the love - and what it takes to rid themselves of anything that threatens to destroy it. The dominoes are falling rapidly, and each decision that follows is an assembly line of chaos. One begets the other and the reader is left wondering when either will wake up, but that never occurs.

As the tale winds down, we behold a woman far removed from the girl we initially met. Murder has stained her innocence and abuse hovers overhead at every turn. Denial and an inability to face her inner demons has compelled her to levy them upon Madame Raquin and Camille. Their victimization is largely fueled by the resentment she carries within. The power of choice and the alternatives available are easy to detect, but she ignored them all. We've witnessed the internal beasts and glimpsed the tattered fragments his appearance have left behind. In the end, she finally confronts her misery, choosing to take her medicine to silence the screams within. I imagine a cloud of peace enveloping her frame as she slumped to the floor and quietly departed. Death becomes her.

Young Zola's first step into the spotlight...
Zola's first published work of fiction, "Therese Raquin" not only established the young Zola as a name to be reckoned with, it also proved to be quite a harbinger of what was to further come from that prurient pen of his.This is where it all began folks, so if you are a true fan of Zola or the French Classics, then you definitely need to give this one a gander. I am glad that I did, and have no reservations about recommending it to the rest of you fan's out there.Like just about all of his great work, this one is seedy, dark, and more often than not - very disturbing.The father of Naturalism was just getting his feet wet in the sewer waters of the late 19th century Parisian world and this was his first audacious step.

"Therese Raquin" is a short, sordid, somber saga about two lovers and their descent into madness resulting from their repulsive past sins of betrayal, adultery, and murder. Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, these two perverse protagonists (aren't they almost always repulsive in a Zola classic?) can escape the law, but not their own consciences.Zola lets us all be voyeurs into the psychosis of these two doomed demons as they slowly but surely unravel upon each page turned.Sure it's dark and depressing, but then again, it's Zola - an artist who pulled no punches, and who was always honest, brave, and insightful.

Again, this one is worth a peek.Emile at times can be a bit repetitive and verbose, and his character's portraits can sometimes possess tad bits of contradictions here and there for the most discerning of you literary buffs, but overall this is one hell of an absorbing read and tough to put down.It's a melodramatic horror story that definitely packs a punch and doesn't quite leave you alone once you are through with it.

A great translation and intro from Robin Buss but please make sure to read the intro AFTER you are done with the novel in order to avoid any spoilers.I sincerely hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
4.4 Stars!

Creepy, disturbing novel- SPOLIER ALERT!!
This is my introduction to Zola's novels and it a keeper!!!, it has every thing a novel should have, murder,madness, blackmail and repressed sexual longing. This is story of women who marry a weak, sickly momma boy out of a obligation for the family taking her in and her sexual feeling are keep under wraps, until she meet her husband loafer friend and these feeling are set free, and together they get ridof the husband by drowning him in a river, with him out of the way, they seemly fall out of love/lust and begain to feel the the dead man is haunting them at every step so much that they begain to dispise each other leading to blackmail and the final horrible conlusion of their death, the book has elements of a Edgar Allen Poe story toward the end with feeling that the dead husband is with them at every step haunting. This book is woth looking into and I for one will check into his other novels

Murder...and that which follows
A deliciously morbid Anatomy of a Murder....and the Murderers themselves.....lust, its gratification and what came after.......suspicion, hatred, and ultimately the madness of guilt in it various guises.....19th century Paris..the "lower classes". atmospheric to the point that the reader can feel these walls closing in on herself as well..i can't say it was an easy read but i won't soon forget it." ... Read more

Product Description
Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the pair are compelled to understand one other. Forging a profound friendship, they must struggle together to endure a disorganised and brutal war, the savage destruction of France's Second Empire and the fall of Napoleon III. One of the greatest of all war novels, "The Debacle" is the nineteenth novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A forceful and deeply moving tale of close friendship, it is also a fascinating chronicle of the events that were to lead, in the words of Zola himself, to the murder of a nation'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

The Seven Wonders of the World of Novels
You can have fun listing the other Six, but everyone's list should include Emile Zola's 20-volume "Macquart-Rougon" story of almost everything in 19th C France. Zola began the series with "La Fortune des Rougon" in 1871, and continued to produce almost a novel a year until 1893 (Le Docteur Pascal). "La Débâcle", next to last in the series, was published in 1892. The debacle of the title was the humiliation France suffered in the Franco-Prussian War begun in 1870, just in fact when Zola was beginning his chronicle. Historians have tended to treat that war as an opera buffa on the part of the French and as a triumph of Machiavellian state-building on the part of Bismark's Germany. Zola includes both these themes in his account, with a scathing portrayal of the rank incompetence of the politicians and generals of France's Third Empire; the bulk of the novel depicts the disastrous battle of Sedan, during which Napoleon III himself was captured by the invading Prussians. But Zola measures the human cost of 'modern' war, not just in blood and rubble but also in its perversion of human behavior, its stimulation of our most bestial instincts, while also dramatizing the heroic courage of individuals and the ineffable loyalty of comrades. The battlefield scenes in Le Debacle are as vivid in words as any in the flickering visuals of a movie theater. So are the horrors suffered by non-combatants. The misery of the defeated common soldiers, imprisoned without shelter or food while their officers are paroled, is terrifying. The Franco-Prussian War was a bizarre hybrid of old and new, of Napoleonic battlefield set-piece strategies and of mechanized 'total' warfare of the sort that had evolved from the American Civil War. Zola apparently researched intensively in preparing to write Le Debacle, his only historical novel, and he succeeded brilliantly in capturing that moment of transition from war as Glory to war as unthinkable Catastrophe. Le Debacle is surely one of the greatest war novels ever written, rivaled only perhaps by War and Peace.

Zola's two chief characters, the peasant corporal Jean and the educated Parisian enlisted soldier Maurice, though profoundly dissimilar in character, become 'wedded' in the rites of combat and survival. Both are sublimely believable fictive personages, whose welfare the reader can't help but 'pray for'. They are also emblematic of the two sides of French society as Zola perceived it -- conservative and radical, of the land and of the city -- and thus the literary inevitability of their encounters and re-encounters achieves more significance than mere plot-driven coincidence. Zola is magnificent in his ability to depict Jean and Maurice as real mortal men and yet as avatars of their nation. There are dozens of lesser characters in Le Debacle as well, from the unnamed ploughboy who works his field while the artillery battles rage to the sternly compassionate surgeon Barouche to Napoleon III, and Zola gives each his due in human portraiture. The women of Le Debacle, more vulnerable and yet more heroic amid the slaughter, are as well realized and individuated as the men. There are unquestionably touches of 19th C melodrama in Le Debacle, but there is an underlying thematic logic to Zola's tale, that justifies any and all literary legerdemain.

I read this translation of Le Debacle, by Leonard Tancock, many years ago, and I've used it as a crutch in re-reading the novel in French. Zola is hard to translate convincingly. If his language is rendered in the syntax and vocabulary of his British contemporaries, it can sound peculiarly stuffy and almost prurient; if it's 'slanged' into the style of 20th C American writers à la Hemingway, it can sound comically anachronistic.The translation barrier is worst in the novels of manners and amours. It's considerably less problematic in Le Debacle, because of the subject matter. Once the battles start raging, the syntax is universal. This translation is quite British; Americans will find themselves bemused at times, but on the whole it's remarkably faithful to the original, and powerfully vivid.

I suppose the translation barrier is one reason why Zola is underappreciated in the Anglophone world. Only thirteen of the twenty Macquart-Rougon novels are currently available in any English form, and many of the translations are decades old and stylistically inept. If you can only read Zola in English, I strongly recommend The Debacle as the best stand-alone first choice.

Unexpected insights into 19th century French history
I got interested in Emile Zola after watching the 1937 movie "The Life of Emile Zola" which was a great biography of France's most prolific author.The story of Captain Alfred Dreyfus was tragic yet typical of the turmoil in France as it was coming down from the exalted empirical heights of Napoleon to the bureaucrat laden military led by inept generals.

"The Debacle: 1870-1871" is Zola's extremely detailed and graphic description of the brief war between France and Germany which showed France's deterioration was certainly no match for Germany's emerging technological prowess and military professionalism.This book certainly lays the foundation for the events to follow in 40 years as World War I.

Excellently written, full of memorable characters who tragically are mired in this short war known as The Debacle.

It has me looking to read more books by this talented author.

Zola's Anti-War Masterpiece
In the late 1860s Prussia, led by Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, engaged the French government headed by Napoleon III in heated negotiations over the throne of Spain and the sovereignty of the Low Countries. The dispute grew as France looked for a fight.

France declared war in 1870 but was ill prepared to fight the ensuing Franco-Prussian War. Poorly equipped and incompetently led, the French soldiers were badly used. The result, from the French point of view was a catastrophe. At the battle of Sedan the Prussians captured over 100,000 French troops and Napoleon III himself. France was forced to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans. In the immediate aftermath of the war, a left-wing rebellion erupted in Paris. It was suppressed with brutal rigor.

Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, Zola's The Debacle is a historical novel in which the facts of the war are very accurately described, and then well-drawn fictional characters are inserted. The story is told with verve through the eyes of two soldiers. The events of the Franco-Prussian War are extremely complex, yet Zola never lets the reader get lost. The story is engrossing and compelling. This is one of the great books of French literature.

To the reader who comes to this review by way of my history of the Tour de France, this book is related to the Tour rather obliquely. Tour founder Henri Desgrange wrote extensively in the sports newspaper L'Auto, which also owned the Tour de France. Desgrange tried to model his own writing style on Zola's.
-Bill McGann, Author of "The Story of the Tour de France"

Best (anti)war novel ever?
Emile Zola's La Debacle, the 19th of his 20 volume Rougon-Macquart series, describes the crushing defeat of the French armies at the hands of the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.During Zola's lifetime, this novel was regarded as his masterpiece.History has decreed that it would be Germinal that would be more enduring, but this is still an outstanding novel.All the stories in this series are linked with recurring characters and interwoven plot lines.Like Germinal, this is a story of destruction and rebirth.

This novel is divided into three sections.In Zola's typical style, each section is focused on a period of several days, with several weeks or months between sections.The main character of the story in Jean Macquart, a character from an earlier novel (La Terre) in the series.Macquart is an enlisted soldier marching to the front with his comrades to face the Prussians.Zola, never a soldier himself, describes well the lot of Jean and his comrades.Lots of marching, fatigue, boredom, and grumbling about the leadership.Hanging over the story, and unbeknowst to the characters, is the coming whirlwind.The Emporer himself (Napoleon III) makes an appearance, but it is rather tragi-comic.
The second section is focused on the battle of Sedan.There are several story threads designed to explain the action of the battle at different times and from perspectives.The descriptions are quite graphic and detailed.Ultimately, the French Army is totally destroyed, the surviving characters become prisoners of war.In the third section, Jean is reunited with his comrade Maurice in Paris at the height of the Commune.The primary theme of this novel is to describe the `rot' of the Third Empire, and how its destruction gives the survivors hope for a brighter future.

The Oxford World Classics translation is outstanding.It contains detailed endnotes to explain topical or historical references that would be lost on modern English speaking/reading audiences.There are several maps and a detailed list of characters to keep everything straight.This edition also contains a well written introduction to allow the reader to place the novel in historical and literary context.

I have several thoughts about this novel that potential readers may or may not find interesting.First, this is an outstanding novel, whether one likes war novels or not.Zola is one of the greatest novelists ever to put pen to paper, and this is arguable one of his best works.The characters in this story are detailed and realistic, the dialogue outstanding, and the plot complex and compelling, but easy to read.Anyone who is afraid of approaching Zola because of past experience with the 19th century English `greats' should not be concerned.Zola has none of the pretentiousness or Victorian puritanism of his English contemporaries, and his writing, while often gloomy, is not ponderous.

Second, with the exception of a few small tweaks for poetic license, this book is an outstanding example of historical fiction.Beyond an enjoyable novel, this book will also provide the reader a history lesson of the first order.In particular, I would highly recommend this book to American readers who know little or nothing of French history of this era.I think that the events of the Commune would be most surprising to many Americans.Certainly the Franco-Prussian war was one of the defining events for the French (and Germans), much as the Civil War was for Americans.The outcome of this war had long lasting political, economic, cultural, and military implications that affect us today.

Third, if I had one complaint about this book, it would be that the author's knowledge of the outcome of the battle weighs over the entire novel.I would almost argue that this novel is defeatist.This is definitely an antiwar novel, but no real sense of imminent destruction covers the Prussian soldiers as it does the French.That is, this is an antiwar novel from the French perspective, but not really from the Prussian.It strikes me that the message conveyed by Zola (probably inadvertantly) is not antiwar in general, but antiwar only for the losers.

Overall though, this is an outstanding novel, one of the best ever written.Highly recommended.

The "Killer Angels" of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71!
As a big student of the War of 1870-71, I was a bit skeptic when I saw this was a historical novel, especially one that was a political commentary. Well, my skepticism was destroyed after about 15 minutes of reading this book. Not only is the author a veteran of the war, his style is SO engrossing I didn't stop reading until I finished the entire book!

The amount of details that are in the narritive can only come from someone who participated in the historical events that are narrated. Zola's characters are easy to identify with, and anyone can pick one character and say "yeah, that's me" as they read the story.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the F/P War or French/European culture/life of the Second Empire. Vivé Napoleon III! ... Read more

Product Description
Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre des Varietes. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her day. Rich men, Comtes and Marquises fall at her feet, great ladies try to emulate her appearance, lovers even kill themselves for her. Nana's hedonistic appetite for luxury and decadent pleasures knows no bounds - until, eventually, it consumes her. "Nana" provoked outrage on its publication in 1880, with its heroine damned as 'the most crude and bestial sort of whore', yes the language of the novel makes Nana almost a mythical figure: a destructive force preying on a corrupt society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

'Nana' is No Mary Magdalene!
If you pick up this novel expecting to encounter a Holy Sinner, a prostitute with a Heart of Gold, you'll be sadly disabused. Anna Coupeau - dite Nana, an actress with no assets except her oozing sexuality - is in fact the granddaughter of Antoine Macquart and appeared as an abused child in Zola's earlier novel L'Assomoir; that's the linkage between this novel and the other nineteen novels of the Rougon/Macquart cycle. Nana is corrupted, odiously selfish, contemptuous of nearly everyone, especially the concupiscent old fools who squander their wealth and health on attempting to bind her to them. Her carnal magnetism is lush enough to dominate men of every rank and age, but (fortunately perhaps) her own willful whimsies and compulsions interfere repeatedly with her bedarkened self-interest. Her rise from gutter-wench to the cynosure of the Parisian demi-monde, and back to the gutter and yet again to palaces, is the narrative thread that holds this novel together, but Nana herself is its subject only as a metonymy for the Second Empire of Napoleon III, the depraved courtesan embodying the whorish society that Emile Zola castigated in all the Rougon/Macquart series. Nana the woman does not "end" well; in fact her final curtain call is ghastly and disgusting. But the curtain call of the Second Empire was no more elevating; the novel Nana ends at the very moment of the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War - the debacle Zola portrayed in his novel Le Debacle - with Parisian mobs howling "to Berlin!, to Berlin!" outside the window of the room where Nana lies stricken with disfiguring small pox.

It's a grand literary irony that "Nana" was ever regarded as disreputable, tasteless,certainly amoral. The book seethes with moral censure; it's an indictment of a foul individual whose follies and 'sins' are congruent with the corrupt society through which she moves. Zola was the "Cato" of Paris, an indignant realist, more censorious than any clerical or political reformer. He was the "conscience" of his era. It makes more sense to regard "Nana" as a fiery sermon of damnation than as pornography.

"Unsurpassable... Straight out of Babylon!"
This was my first Zola novel, and I'm glad I started here. Considering that Zola is the French writer famous for advocating a new literary style - which he called naturalism - to address heavy issues such as war ("the Debacle"), labor strife ("Germinal"), murder ("the Beast Within"), I was surprised at the light comic touch in much of "Nana." In the guise of a bedroom farce, this book is a critique of the hedonistic world of late 1860s Paris. At the start of the story, the voluptuous and audacious Nana creates a stir in her theatrical debut as Blond Venus, but it is in her real-life role as Paris' most sought after "high-class tart" that she achieves her greatest fame. A cross-section of male society (everyone from a love-sick teenager to an aged marquis), falls for Nana, and her admirers even bump into each other at the doorway of her boudoir as her busy schedule sometimes creates awkward conflicts. "The bedroom was being made into a public right of way," Zola tells us. Nana's antics often had me chuckling in disbelief at her chutzpah and ruthlessness as she discarded one beau after another (after spending all of their money): "A ruined man dropped through her fingers like a ripe fruit, to rot quietly on the ground, by himself."

But there is a lot more going on than Nana's prurient misadventures. Zola's goal was to create an accurate and comprehensive picture of people and society in "Nana" and in the 19 other novels that comprised his Rougon-Macquart cycle. In doing so, he picked up the torch from his literary forefather Honore de Balzac, who penned a similarly ambitious series he dubbed The Human Comedy more than 30 years earlier. Benefiting from Balzac's model and the advantage of writing at a later period, Zola was able to portray French society with unprecedented frankness and gritty attention to detail. Zola tells the story of Nana through a series of set pieces, each one representing a new phase of her "career." Zola introduces us to the theatre scene of Paris (Nana's actor cohorts are a riot); gatherings of high society in Paris' most upscale salons; a rowdy dinner party hosted by Nana; a high-stakes horse race (in which a horse named in Nana's honor is part of the lineup); we are even shown what may literature's first lesbian pick up bar/restaurant, where Nana meets a prostitute who becomes her only true love.

"Nana," published in 1880, is the ninth book in the Rougon-Macquart series. I enjoyed it so much that I purchased the novels that immediately preceded and followed it, "L'Assommoir" (about Nana's parents) and "Pot-Bouille" (about adultery and other goings on in an apartment building). Zola never bogs down the narrative with excessive background. In fact, all we need to know about Nana's family history is explained to us when she discovers a newspaper article written by a journalist acquaintance. Tellingly enough, Nana doesn't bother to read the snarky article (which informs us that her mother was a laundress and her father a drunk) but assumes it's favorable because of its impressive length.

In his preface to "L'Assommoir" Zola described that story as "morality in action," which pretty much sums up this novel as well. The conclusion is epic in scope, and it absolutely floored me. The great Gustave Flaubert was positively giddy with admiration for "Nana," particularly the ending: "Chapter 14, unsurpassable!... Yes!... Christ Almighty!... Incomparable!... Straight out of Babylon!"

You shouldn't need any higher recommendation to read "Nana" than that!

Nana
great job sending it right away. I am in the midst of reading it now for my Realism and Impressionism Undergrad Art History course

Unique and surprising - 4.5
Well, if there's one thing to be said about "Nana", it's that the book will sure keep you on your toes. With a large and shifting cast of characters (all of whom seem to revolve around, of course, Nana), Zola wrote the first of his novels that I did not immediately love, but a remarkable, disturbing and bizarre book.

For those coming from "L'Assommoir", it's easy to remember Nana as the girl who starts out adorable and quickly disappears from her parents' lives. For those who haven't read "L'Assommoir" yet, do so now. It's a great book. As for "Nana", it continues with Zola's incredibly detailed style. This writing, which suited me fine in "L'Assommoir" and in "Germinal" (excellent) suddenly seems to drag a little. "Nana" is wickedly brilliant in all the dialogues and the relationships between people. In between, however, the story slows down, at times almost bogging down.

"Nana" presents the highly hypocritical and strange world of the wealthy Parisians at the time of the World Fair. Full of whoring and sex (all of which is, of course, never explicitly described, leaving this book technically "clean", if you don't mind hearing about cross-dressing orgies), "Nana" seems to mock the culture that at once harbors such behavior and simultaneously criticizes it. The reader almost feels sympathy for a struggling Nana, as she wreaks havoc around her. There lies the great genius of Zola's writing - even as the book stumbles, it manages to keep the reader hooked to Nana's story and wondering what strange scene will come next.

"Nana" is a clever, interesting book. Offering a view of Parisian theatrics and "wealthy" life, it also presents hypocrisy, debauchery and female strength - Nana repeatedly proves to the men around her that she does not need them, that she can rely and survive by herself. It's an important addition to the Rougon-Macquart cycle, telling one more French tale. It's a special, fascinating, enrapturing book. Still, it does not manage to cast the same spell as "Germinal" and "L'Assommoir". While I recommend this wholeheartedly, I suggest readers start with those two great books first. Regardless, "Nana" is a unique and surprising book about whoring in Paris - 4.5.

Recommended.

too much detail, too many characters
Lots of detail. Sometimes way too much detail. And although the characters manage to somewhat resolve themselves into individuals (at least some of the men do), the way in which they're introduced made them very hard to distinguish one from the other for the better part of the book. ... Read more

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Emile Zola's classic work ... Read more

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Book, hardcover ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; ... Read more

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Classic naturalist novel about a Paris prostitute, in the original French. First published in 1880.According to Wikipedia: "Emile Zola (2 April 1840 - 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France...After his first major novel, Therese Raquin (1867), Zola started the long series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire... More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career re synthetized his work into La Comedie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nana, fille de joie
Avec Nana, Emile Zola décrit le Paris des Variétés, du théatre, des filles de joie. Le récit commence par la lancée de Nana, dans La Venus Blonde, ou elle chante et joue très mal mais séduit, par sa blondesse et sa sensualité animale.
Bientôt, les hommes se pressent chez elle. Elle en ruine plusieurs, banquiers, aristrocrates, militaires. Tous payent pour une heure ou une nuit et se succèdent à un rythme effréné, dans une frénésie de plaisirs avides.
Nana, pour reprendre l'image d'Émile Zola, c'est la mouche d'or qui apporte avec elle un germe de pourriture et qui finit par détruire tout sur son passage. Et pourtant, elle est bonne fille, ne faisant rien par méchanceté, poussée dans la rue ou les bras de ses amants pour survivre elle-même, tentant de contenter les attentes de chacun, par gentillesse ou par faiblesse.
Dans Nana, on retrouve la force de la femme, une emprise sur les hommes qui envoute et que rien ne brise. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Lodger: a provincial thriller
A devil of a man: he asks nothing, and you tell him everything.
Imagine you are the father of three teenage kids, one of whom is `innocent', i.e. mentally handicapped. You live with the family in a large house with a nice garden in Southern France. You have earned money as a trader in the past and are now semi - retired. Though you are not religious, you let the local priest talk you into letting the upper level of your house to a new priest, one who moves here from near Paris. The lodger turns up with his mother and moves in stealthily. They are frugal people and nobody knows anything about them. In the course of events you watch the lodger make a church career and a political one and you watch him take over the mind of your wife, who turns religious, while you, the father of the family and owner of the house, are moved out of the way in the most systematic way: the priest and his entourage establish themselves in the house like a cancer grows in a body. That drives you crazy as it would almost anybody. (The process of driving M. Mouret to insanity is worthy of absurd theatre at its best. Did Ionesco know Zola well? I wouldn't be surprised! I need to follow this up.)

This is volume 4 of the Rougon-Macquart series, in terms of publishing chronology. In a way it is a direct sequel to volume 1: it continues the tale how the elder Rougon couple consolidates wealth and influence in provincial Plassans (which stands for Aix en Provence).Central character is the ambitious priest, patronized by the Rougon couple upon recommendation by their high-flying son in Paris (His Excellency). The priest gains political influence in the town as well as personal power over a Rougon daughter. The book is, in Zola's own words, about wolves and rats. The main political subject of the whole series of 20 is the corruption and moral decay of the second empire of Napoleon III. On a personal level, Zola investigates `appetites', like ambitions or greed.

Two key themes of this sequel are worldly ambitions of churchmen and the inheritance of mental insanity. We remember from volume 1, that the mother of Rougon and Macquart was institutionalized. She stays in an asylum until old age. In this volume, one of her grandsons is taken to the same institution. Her great-granddaughter isthe `innocent' teenager.
The priest, our bad guy, is one of those sly ones who watch and wait before they make their moves. He is a true relative in spirit of Felicity Rougon, the dynasty matriarch:always watching, if necessary hiding behind a curtain. There is a lot of spying going on here, through key holes and in more sophisticated manners.

Zola was a writer who liked to surprise. After the heavy doses of naturalism in the previous sequel, The Belly of Paris, here we are given a psychological thriller which stays away from theoretical treatises and from his penchant for word orgies. (Read his market inventories in the Belly if you want to know what I mean. Or read the garden descriptions in La Curee.) The political games are played among three parties: the Rougon are on the side of the Bonapartistes, who have to fight for keeping their power against Republicans as well as Legitimists, i.e. supporters of the Bourbons dynasty.

This book has been called by some the best of the whole series. I must suspend my opinion on that until after volume 20.

.
Lots of political intrigue, but the novel is also interesting, because here Rougons and Macquarts are cross-bred. As one can recall from the first novel "La Fortune des Rougons/the Career of Rougons", Pierre Rougon was never particularly fond of his two
half-siblings, nonetheless, his daughter marries the son of his half-sister. Both die after loosing their sanity. It is a neurological disease that clearly was passed down to them from their grandmother. It sets Martha Rougon apart from her three brothers, two of whom were very practical. In general, all the neurological diseases are much more traceable among Macquarts than Rougons.

The best book of the Rougon-Macquart series
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The Conquest of Plassans (Rougon-Macquart): The Rougon family, in M. Zola's narrative, rises to fortune, and the town of Plassans (really Aix-en-Provence) bows down before its power. But time passes, the revolt of the clergy supervenes, by their influence the town chooses a Royalist Marquis as deputy, and it becomes necessary to conquer it once again. ---Abbé Faujas, by whom this conquest is achieved on behalf of the Empire, is a strongly conceived character, perhaps the most real of all the priests that are scattered through M. Zola's books. No other priestly creation of M. Zola's pen vie with the stern, chaste, authoritative, ambitious Faujas, the man who subdues Plassans, and who wrecks the home of the Mouret family, with whom he lives. The book largely deals with the matter of 'the priest in the house,' and towards the end of the volume Mouret, the husband who has been driven mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum, returns home and wreaks the most terrible vengeance upon those who have wronged him. --- The pages which deal with the madman's escape and his horrible revenge are certainly among the most powerful that M. Zola has ever written, and have been commended for their effectiveness by several of his leading critics. --- (Ernest Alfred Vizetelly)

A hidden treasure
This is the fourth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series about life during the Second Empire in France. Unfortunately, it is a lesser-known work, long out-of-print (though one can find it in ebook form now). While this book is not one of Zola's masterworks, it certainly doesn't deserve the level of obscurity into which it has fallen. The story takes place in the fictional town of Plassans, in Provence. A new priest comes to town, Abbé Faujas, and he and his mother rent a room in the home of the Mourets (Francois Mouret of the Macquart family, and his wife Marthe Rougon). At first stand-offish and shy, Abbé Faujas soon learns the amount of social and political influence that a clergyman can wield in a small town, and he starts to get more and more involved in the affairs of Plassans. He also starts to insinuate himself more and more into the lives of his landlords, much to the chagrin of Francois Mouret. It's an election year, and as various politicians and church officials play a kind of chess game for the votes of Plassans, the once meek and mild Abbé becomes more power-hungry. Is it possible his previous mild-mannered behavior was just an act to conceal a hidden political agenda? This book has a light-hearted satirical tone overall; it's not one of Zola's deep, philosophical works. Those who have read The Fortune of the Rougons will enjoy the depiction of Plassans, and the further development of some of the characters that appeared in that first book. The characters are engaging and the plot has some surprises in it. Zola seems to have had fun writing it, and it is a fun ride for the reader.

Election intrigue in France's deep south
A superb step-by-step account of how to win the hearts and minds of the voters in a small country town. An atmosphere of brooding menace pervades the book as a "creeping Jesus" of a priest is brought in to swingthe forthcoming election in favour of the government party. The shortchapters make the book highly readable and wind up the tensionmarvellously. The one person who sees through the priest is powerless toact as his house and his whole life are gradually taken over - until thefinal cataclysmic scene when .... but I won't spoil it all by telling youwhat happens. A merciless and meticulous portrayal of the intrigues in asmall French provincial town that deserves to be much better known than itis, this early work forms a pair with the following volume (number five) inthe Rougon-Macquart saga "La Faute De L'Abbé Mouret/The Sin Of FatherMouret". The subject matter may not be attractive, but Zola has madeit compelling reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point.

Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Paris strife
The Belly of Paris (Oxford World's Classics)Who better than Zola to fictionalize the brutal life of the poor in Paris - and the destruction of the old Paris for the much-loved modern, straightened Paris - and their conflict with the bourgeoisie?Also gives a large taste of the old Les Halles marketplace, now replaced by the ugly, "modern" Les Halles shopping mall.Great characterizations.The wonderful opening leads into even greater literary marvels.(This should serve as a warning to politicians thinking about further 'modernizing' Paris and other cities, without concern for what is lost and who is displaced.)

Le VENTRE de PARIS
With a terrific introduction to Zola and his work(s), the translation of THE BELLY OF PARIS is an excellent one!I am certain I will be referring to it many times over not only with studehts but for my own knowledge.I read most of the book while in Paris and that made the book even more impressive and noteworthy.

Dr. Alan-Clarke Hudson

Big fat novel marred by cub-scout editing
Not Zola's best work by a long shot, but mostly a good read.The many pages of description, though typical of the era and of Zola's late style, end up feeling overindulgent.I read this book in small portions, and found myself frequently bored and even agrieved by the endless word-pictures of mountains of produce and hoards of marketers.It felt as though I'd hired Zola as a guide to Les Halles only to find him pesky and insistant, always tapping me on the shoulder and urging me to look at all the colors and smell all the odors and hear all the babble.The story ended up more interesting as a period piece than as literature.But it's entertaining and worth the effort.

But I owe no thanks to the editors.This edition as so full of typos, misprints, and other errors, sometimes more than one per page, that I have to question whether the translation itself is scholarly.A greater work might have sent me to the French to double check the translation, but this book just isn't worth the effort.

If you're considering where to start with Zola, look first to L'Assommoir or Therese Raquin.They are more rewarding.

An underrated work
This novel, the third in the Rougon-Macquart series, is a great example of what Zola does best. Through his minute attention to descriptive detail, he creates a setting based on historical fact, peoples it with an ensemble cast of realistic characters, and before we know it we are entangled in their lives as if we were one of the neighborhood. In this case the neighborhood is Les Halles, the huge marketplace of Paris, and the cast is composed of fish mongers, butchers, bakers, vegetable sellers, and street urchins. The two main characters are Lisa Quenu (born Lisa Macquart, daughter of Antoine Macquart), and her brother-in-law Florent. Florent, a Republican who's had some trouble with the law, seems to be an embodiment of Zola's feelings toward the revolutionary movement of the time, both positive and negative. Lisa, who runs a butcher shop with her husband, represents the moderate French citizen of the era, far more interested in the comforts and challenges of everyday life than in the events of the world outside her own immediate surroundings. While Florent entertains grandiose Utopian visions of a socialist France, politics is the last thing on Lisa's mind. Her main concern is keeping up the appearance of relative prosperity, thereby winning her family a bit of social status within the neighborhood.
Depending on which edition you read, this book is either titled The Belly of Paris or The Fat and the Thin. The second title refers to two types of people in the world. On the most obvious level it could simply refer to the division between the Haves and the Have-Nots. But Zola explores the dichotomy on a deeper level, separating mankind into those who are concerned foremost with creating a comfortable life for themselves, preoccupied only by the immediate world around them (The Fat) and those who have an outward concern toward the world, life, and humanity as a whole, living a life of sacrifice--whether deliberate or not--because of a devotion to a higher cause, whether it be political conviction, art, or some other calling (The Thin). Zola doesn't pick sides, but rather points out the strengths and foibles of both types. This novel is not a masterpiece, and it won't have the kind of profound effect on you as some of Zola's better books (Germinal, La Terre, L'Assomoir). It is an engaging read, however, and can certainly stand as a worthy sidekick alongside Zola's greatest works.

A Decent Novel, But Not Zola's Best
This novel ties the main character Flaurent with the Rougon-Macquart family through marriage of his half brother. Flaurent is a runaway convict, who lives in his half brother's shop, which is a part of the big Parisian market. Flaurent is a former school teacher, who had had no interest in politics, but once, during the coup d'etat in December of 1851, while walking along the street came under police fire and had his hands smudged in dead woman's blood. That is how he got sentenced to hard labor. There is a sharp contrast between him and most of the other characters in the novel...

The novel is somewhat draggy at times and gossips with squabbles take up lots of passages, but one must bear in mind that in the Rougon-Macquart epic Zola was trying to create the broadest possible picture of the French society under Napoleon III. That is why, besides the Parisian market, the epic narrates about: big shops defeating small ones ("Au Bonheur des dames/Ladies Paradise"), miners ("Germinal"), the stock exchange ("Argent/Money"), etc. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Trials (Treason); Antisemitism; Press and politics; Polemics; Jews; Biography ... Read more

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When Jean Macquart arrives in the peasant community of Beauce, where farmers have worked the same land for generations, he quickly finds himself involved in the corrupt affairs of the local Fouan family. Aging and Lear-like, Old Man Fouan has decided to divide his land between his three children: his penny-pinching daughter Fanny, his eldest son - a far from holy figure known as ?Jesus Christ? - and the lecherous Buteau, Macquart?s friend. But in a community where land is everything, sibling rivalry quickly turns to brutal hatred, as Buteau declares himself unsatisfied with his lot. Part of the vast Rougon-Macquart cycle, The Earth was regarded by Zola as his greatest novel. A fascinating portrayal of a struggling but decadent community, it offers a compelling exploration of the destructive nature of human ignorance and greed ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

King Lear of the Dungheaps
It's not at all certain that Emile Zola intended any allusion to Shakespeare's most tragic tragedy in this, his most tragic novel, yet many critics have noted the similarity. The narrative of La Terre is set in motion by the fatal decision of Père Fouan, a peasant on the wheat-growing plains near Paris, to divide his small plots of soil between his three children on the understanding that they will all provide an annuity to sustain him in his old age. Of course it doesn't work; the three children are all as stubborn, callous, and selfish as the old man. They begrudge him the smallest cost, they squabble at each other, and they pass him rudely from household to household until he ends up, like Lear, a mad decrepit ruin raging in a night storm on the open fields.Old Fouan is anything but a wise patriarch or a man of simple virtues, yet his plight is so dismal and his three children so hatefully indifferent to his humanity that one eventually feels an immense pity for him, and for the whole class of peasantry enslaved to a dying agricultural inheritance. A second plot weaves through La Terre, the story of Fouan's nieces Lise and Françoise, the first of whom marries her cousin Buteau, Fouan's brutal second son, while Françoise is wooed by the landless laborer Jean. I won't disclose any more of the story lines.

Earthy? Yes, of course; how should The Earth not be earthy?
Filthy then? Unquestionably! Peasant agriculture existed on filth, on manure and mud, and Zola's descriptions of peasant life reek of both.
Obscene? La Terre was denounced as pornographic at the time of its publication in 1887, and in comparison to any serious work in English literature of the 19th C, it's shockingly 'naturalistic' in its depictions of fornication, violation, defecation, flatulence, and violence ... all inscribed in words of fewer syllables.

Beastly? Why not? When humans live with and like beasts, Zola expresses, they will be beastly to each other. The unlucky laborer Jean is plainly the least beastly character in the novel, the only one who shows any empathy or conscience. That's any extraordinary concession from Zola, amounting almost to a refutation of the author's central 'deterministic' thesis of the influence of heredity on the individual, since good-hearted Jean is in fact Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart, one of the founding scoundrels of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty of scoundrels whose lives are chronicled across the twenty volumes of Zola's vast human tragedy. Jean Macquart will also be a central and sympathetic character in Zola's great novel of the Franco-Prussian War, "La Debacle". [And where is "our" Zola, the writer of sufficient moral stature to portray the 'Debacle in Iraq'? Someone to lavish the same contempt on the Imperial Presidencies of Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush that Zola heaped on the Second Empire of Napoleon III?]

Jean Macquart is the only explicit link between La Terre and the other Rougon-Macquart novels, and Zola spends far fewer words on exposing the corruption of the Second Empire in La Terre than in other books. In fact, La Terre is probably Zola's least digressive, least theoretical novel. Zola was not a scion of the peasantry; he had to research the lifestyles and conditions of agricultural France as systematically as a scholar in order to prepare himself to write La Terre, but his scholarship is thoroughly amalgamated into his narrative. It's hard to recall that he wasn't writing from first-hand experience of the hardship and isolation of peasant life. His descriptions are as convincing as glass-plate photographs, even more convincing than the paintings of peasants by Millet and other pre-impressionists such as the "Man with a Hoe" on the cover of this Penguin edition. [I've just had the good fortune, by the way, to cross paths with a touring exhibition of French 19th C paintings from the Musee D'Orsay. What a lot of insight those paintings offer into Zola's writings! And the Rougon-Macqaurt novels illuminate the paintings even more brightly. I'd strongly recommend pursuing this juxtaposition of Zola with Millet/Manet/Cezanne/van Gogh if you have an interest in either writing or painting. Zola was an influential art critic as well as a novelist, and an major advocate of the Impressionists.]

The two story lines of La Terre - the divided inheritance and the stalled love - are only embellishments of this vast depiction of rural France, of The Earth that was for generation after peasant generation, and that was at the edge of the precipice of modernity in Zola's times. It's The Soil itself that holds this novel together. In the end, the soil and the humanity it supports, however miserably, are the protagonists of Zola's novel. The sheer bulk of information about agricultural and domestic technologies in pre-modern rural France would make La Terre a classic of anthropology, yet all the carefully detailed realism is blended so dramatically into the narrative that one never gets bored with it. The brief excitements of the human life cycle - copulations, births, marriages, deaths - spin past in hectic disorder against the ever-recurring cycles of The Land, the Good Earth, the Bread Giver, forever re-fertilized by the compost of human struggles. Zola's novel of the soil is the least romanticized and yet most emotionally potent portrayal of peasant life in all literature.

Info on editions, characters and thoughts
There are two English translations of `La Terre`, the first was by Henry Vizetelly in 1888, it is freely available on Internet Archive, Gutenberg and in later re-prints. Vizetelly was jailed for 3 months for indecency by uptight Victorians, but he really should have been jailed for the bowdlerizations. Luckily in 1980 Parmee made an excellent translation for Penguin Classics (as `The Earth`), which, as of this review, is the most recent available. Amazon lists it as out of print but this is not accurate, it can still be purchased new (but apparently not on Amazon!). The problem is Penguin recycles it's ISBN numbers so the original 1980 Penguin edition is out print and the new 1990's edition (new cover, same otherwise) is not showing up in Amazon's database.

`La Terre` never entirely succeeds as `Germinal` did, the work most comparable. It is am ambitious book that could have been epic and one of his very best, but Zola tries to do too much and the energy is diffused. There are over 100 named characters, many with multiple names making at least 150 names, plus the many interrelated family relationships between each. This requires significant genealogical memory and the reward is not entirely satisfying. Zola was trying to recreate a whole rural farming village but aesthetically it didn't come together. Unlike in `Germinal` which has class struggle for a brighter future, there is no larger theme of social justice. The first 200 pages are slow, and the final 50 are like an antiquated picaresque Dickens novel with all the loose ends tied up in an epic single afternoon of action. However unlike Dickens there are no happy endings here!

On the positive side, it's Emile Zola. Zola is a genius at choosing and describing detail so the reader has a fair idea what "A Day in the Life of a Peasant" was like, and the book is worth reading for its anthropological aspects alone. It is comically scatological, which Zola did on purpose since the novel is about the earth (night soil, etc..), "dark humor" at its best, who knew Zola could be so funny. But this comes across a bit pejorative, highlighting the worst aspects of the rural and poor.

It's not a bad novel, but I don't think it achieved what Zola intended, and aesthetically isn't as fully realized as `Germinal`. If your a fan of Zola you will probably enjoy it, but not before some of his better known works.

While reading the novel I wished I had a complete list of the characters. I've since found an old book called "A Zola Dictionary" (1912) which contains a list which I've re-formatted for the web. See the comments section below for the URL, it is very helpful.

Love Zola, but Didn't Enjoy La Terre
I am a huge Emile Zola fan and have read most of his novels.La Terre is without a doubt my least favorite Zola novel.The book is well written, of course, but I didn't like the characters or the story.Having read a lot of Zola, I wasn't shocked by the depiction of the coarse, greedy peasants, but I grew weary of the story after a short while, and had to struggle to finish the book.For whatever reason, I just didn't care what was going to happen on the next page.I never felt like the story was building up to an ending that I cared about.My advice is to read lots of Zola, but to put "La Terre" somewhere toward the bottom of your Zola reading list.

Extremely depressing but wonderful reading
Victor Hugo and Zola were alive at the same time.Hugo chose to write about the grander ideas in life.Zola wrote about the people and problems at the bottom of society.This story could be related to almost any family in a rural area. It is easy to get lost in the story. I recommend Zola for everyone to read.

"...a great deal of hard work to produce a great deal of poverty."
The connection to the Rougon - Macquart series is Jean Macquart (the brother of Gervaise from "L'Assommoir"), but even though he is the main character in that respect "The Earth" is about so much more.Mainly the human condition told through the lives of the townsfolk and farmers of Beauce.Jealousy, murder, rape, farting, love, blasphemy, birth, longing, violence, cursing, sex it's all here...even a belligerent puking donkey!Yes, Zola's storytelling can sometimes be shocking bordering on vulgar, but so is life.A masterpiece. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / General; ... Read more

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Émile Zola, né à Paris le 2 avril 1840, mort à Paris le 29 septembre 1902, est un écrivain, journaliste et homme public français, considéré comme le chef de file du naturalisme.C’est l'un des romanciers français les plus universellement populaires, l'un des plus publiés et traduits au monde. Ses romans ont connu de très nombreuses adaptations au cinéma et à la télévision. Sa vie et son œuvre ont fait l'objet de nombreuses études historiques. Sur le plan littéraire, il est principalement connu pour Les Rougon-Macquart, fresque romanesque en vingt volumes dépeignant la société française sous le Second Empire. Les dernières années de sa vie ont été marquées par son engagement dans l'affaire Dreyfus avec la publication en janvier 1898, dans le quotidien L'Aurore, de l'article intitulé « J’Accuse…! » qui lui a valu un procès pour diffamation et un exil à Londres.

Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism, an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus. More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution. The series examines two branches of a single family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts, for five generations. From 1877 onwards with the publication of l'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy–he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert. - Wikipedia ... Read more

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HIS MASTERPIECEwhich in the original French bears the title of LOeuvreis a strikingly accurate story of artistic life in Paris during the latter years of the Second Empire. ... Read more

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The Masterpiece from a french point of view
Hi, first, you have to know that I have read the book in french so I got the direct style from Emile Zola. I've noticed that there's nothing about the Masterpiece by Zola. It's a story of a painter, who is creating one of the new styles of the 19th, and his difficulties with other painters. It's the explicit subject, but this book is mostly about the passion some artists have in life, and some others who've accepted the rules of society. You will experiment in this book the delight of creation but also the destruction of the human in creation. If you're interested in impressionism you should read this book, the historic point of view will interest you a lot since the writer has been a witness of great french painters, but if u get the message of this book, which is the essence of life, u'll really have a wonderful moment reading it.
Sorry for my bad english.
Sincerely,
GaFIR777
(Hope you'll read it Oracle242) ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / French; ... Read more

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Essential for reading Zola
`A Zola Dictionary`, first published in 1912, is in the public domain and free copies are available online (see the Comment below for a link). The bulk of the dictionary is an alphabetical list of every character from the 20 Rougon-Macquart novels with a sentence to paragraph long description. The books sub-title says it also contains: "a biographical and critical introduction, synopses of the plots, bibliographical note, map, genealogy, etc." although these are somewhat brief in comparison to the character list at the heart of the book.

I find keeping track of the 100's of characters in each of Zola's novels difficult, they are non-English names that don't "stick" and are easily confused between similar sounding names, and many characters have more than one name depending on family relations. Even the primary characters have complex histories that it is helpful to have a summary for. Zola wrote "crowded novels" with characters showing up only once or twice. It's easy to skip over them if you don't remember who they are, perhaps briefly introduced 200 pages back and mentioned only once again, they are not central to the plot, but one misses the depth of Zola's intent.

`A Zola Dictionary` is the only comprehensive list of characters I have found. It is so comprehensive, for `La Terre` ("The Earth"), it contains the name of every cow, plus 4 or 5 historical brigands mentioned only once in passing - it seems as if every name has an entry. The downside is they are all listed alphabetically in one giant list without regard to which novel they are from (although this is noted at the end of each description) - so it's a chore to search the dictionary looking up a name - it would be better to have a single-page reference list of all characters within a particular novel to avoid page flipping through the dictionary. To that end I created such a list for `La Terre` and posted it on the web with descriptions extracted from this dictionary (see Comment for link). Another problem is it contains serious and unnecessary plot spoilers. However, the plot spoilers are towards the end of each entry, so if one is in the middle of reading the novel and want a reminder of who a character is, just read the first sentence or two of the entry (this is not always easy!). Finally, the descriptions were written with the values of aVictorian moralist and will occasionally be laughable to the modern reader. I found this to be a bonus in helping understand the perspective of the age and what the English censors were so concerned about. For example in `La Terre`, a novel which contains incest as a central plot device, it is never mentioned in the dictionary at all, presumably bowdlerized from the English translations of the day. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Trials (Treason); Antisemitism; Press and politics; Polemics; Jews; Biography ... Read more

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