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The first major work of the father of French Naturalism, “Thérèse Raquin” is the shocking and scandalous initial big success in Emile Zola’s impressive writing career. Zola’s third novel was published serially in 1867 and then as a book in 1868. The story revolves around a young woman, Thérèse, who is unhappily married to her first cousin Camille, largely due to her domineering, if well-intentioned, aunt and Camille’s mother, Madame Raquin. Camille, selfish and spoiled by his mother, decides to move the little family to Paris to pursue a career. While there Camille meets up with an old friend, Laurent, who quickly becomes Thérèse's lover. Thérèse and Laurent go to terrible and horrific lengths to be together, but the happy ending they think they will find eludes them and they cannot escape their guilt. It eventually become their undoing, proving them to be the “human beasts” that Zola attempted to portray in a scientifically detached manner in this grisly and intense experimental novel. A sinister story of adultery and murder in lower class Parisian society, “Thérèse Raquin” is a dreadfully realistic novel that remains one of Zola’s most masterful works. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Émile Zola was one of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement. In 1871 Zola began to write his most notable series of novels, the “Rougon-Macquart Novels”, that relate the history of a fictional family under the Second Empire. As a strict naturalist, Zola was greatly concerned with science, especially the problems of evolution and heredity vs. environment. However, unlike Honoré de Balzac, whose works examined a wider scope of French society, Zola focused on the evolution of one, single family. “The Ladies’ Paradise” is the eleventh novel in this series, and begins exactly where “Pot-Bouille” left off. Octave Mouret has married and now owns a department store where twenty year old Denise Baudu, who has come to Paris with her brothers, takes a job as a saleswoman. The novel reflects symbolically on capitalism, the modern city, changes in consumer culture, the bourgeois family, and sexual attitudes at the end of the 19th century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Originally published in serial form in 1884 to 1885, “Germinal” is Émile Zola’s realistic depiction of the coalminers’ strike in northern France in the 1860s. In this faithful translation from the original French by Havelock Ellis, the story centers on Étienne Lantier, a young migrant worker who arrives at the coalmining town of Montsou in search of work. Set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and oppression, “Germinal” is the story of the idealistic but naive Étienne, who embraces the ideals of the socialistic movement and goes on to lead a strike of the coalminers with disastrous consequences. In turns harrowing and violent, Zola brilliantly describes scenes of riots and dramatic rescues, while at the same time bringing to life the characters’ romances, passions, and frailties. Based on exhaustive research of coalmining and the worker’s movement, “Germinal” established Zola as a pioneer of the realist movement. Recognized as one of Zola’s masterpieces, “Germinal” would widely become associated with the struggle of the working class and the socialistic movement that dominated the political environment of Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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We first meet Nana in the Variety Theatre, where the captivating eighteen-year-old is appearing in the lead role of a musical—even though she can't act or sing. «Nana has something that makes up for everything else,» the theater owner explains, and he's right. Instead of booing her off the stage, the crowd howls with admiration. She has disrobed by the third act, and her career as a femme fatale is off to a sensational start.Nana crawls out of the gutter to ascend the heights of Parisian society, devouring men and squandering fortunes along the way. Zola begins the story of French realism's most beguiling siren in 1867, amid the decadence and moral decay of France's Gilded Age. Nana's corruption reflects the spirit of her era, her prostitution symbolizing the degenerate state of Second Empire politics and society. Hailed as one of the first modern novels, Nana addresses contemporary subjects with realistic observations, dialogue, and scenarios. Its publication sparked a heated controversy that made it an overnight bestseller, and it has long since reigned as a classic of French literature.

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Emile Zola’s own stage adaptation of his taut, psychological thriller. An intense story of adultery, murder and revenge, streaked with social satire.

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Emile Zola (1840-1902) is perhaps the most important French writer of the 19th century. Zola dramatically shaped the course of French literature through the development of naturalism, characterized by the unsentimental and realistic portrayal of middle and lower class French life. His twenty novel cycle «Les Rougon-Macquart» is epic in scope, often drawing comparisons to the prolific output of Balzac. Here, in his 1878 novel «Une page d'amour» («A Love Episode») we encounter the eighth installment of this cycle. «A Love Episode» is Zola at his best. Read as the Rougon-Macquart family tree continues to develop, we witness the dynamism of the human spirit in full bloom. Only Zola captures French life under the Second Empire with such force and vision.

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Emile Zola is perhaps the most important, and certainly one of the most controversial, writers of 19th century French literature. Zola dramatically shaped the course of literature through the development of naturalism, characterized by the unsentimental and realistic portrayal of class in French society. His twenty novel cycle «Les Rougon-Macquart» is epic in scope, often drawing comparisons to the prolific output of Balzac. Here in the fourth installment of that epic collection we find «The Conquest of Plassans,» which centers on the fictional Provencal town of Plassans. The generally pleasant lives of the townspeople are disrupted when the strange and sinister cleric Abbé Faujas comes to town. As the story unravels it becomes evident that the cleric has arrived to try and win influence in the town for outside political forces. Through a series of intrigues, plots, slanders and insinuations, Faujas begins to unravel the otherwise harmonious community. No family is more impacted by the cleric's machinations than that of Francois Mouret. The suppressed English edition of «The Conquest of Plassans» first published in the late 19th century by Henry Vizetelly is presented here in this volume.

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"Germinal" is Émile Zola's realistic depiction of the coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s. The story centers on Étienne Lantier, a young migrant worker who arrives at the coalmining town of Montsou in search of work as a coalminer. Set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and oppression, «Germinal» is the story of the idealistic but naive Étienne, who embraces the ideals of the socialistic movement and goes on to lead a strike of the coalminers with disastrous consequences. Recognized as one of Zola's undisputed masterpieces, «Germinal» would widely become associated with the struggle of the working class and the socialistic movement that dominated the political environment of Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

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One of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement, was Émile Zola (1840-1902). In 1871 Zola began to his most notable series of novels, the «Rougon-Macquart Novels,» that relate the history of a fictional family under the Second Empire. As a strict naturalist, Zola was greatly concerned with science, especially the problems of evolution and heredity vs. environment. However, unlike Honoré de Balzac, whose works examined a wider scope of society, Zola focused on the evolution of one, single family. «The Ladies' Paradise» is the eleventh novel in this series, and begins exactly where «Pot-Bouille» left off. Octave Mouret has married and now owns a department store where twenty year old Denise Baudu, who has come to Paris with her brothers, takes a job as a saleswoman. The novel reflects symbolically on capitalism, the modern city, changes in consumer culture, the bourgeois family and sexual attitudes.

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The third novel in Zola's twenty-volume series entitled «Les Rougon-Macquart,» this story revolves around and within the 21-acre market Les Halles Centrales of Paris. The starving scholar Florent has escaped his unwarranted exile on Devil's Island, and he is alternately entranced and disgusted by his refuge in 'the belly of Paris.' Zola describes the market and Florent's experiences in the midst of it with his characteristically captivating comprehension, foreshadowing the total mastery of working-class speech in his later works. Florent makes a friend of Claude Lantier, a painter who explains the battle being waged in the vast Central Markets between the 'fat' burghers and 'thin' lower class, in which Florent is soon embroiled. He is a man caught between the fat and the thin, and this lack of allegiance leads to painful condemnation and Florent's ultimate disintegration. Presented here is the somewhat expurgated 1895 translation of Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, entitled «The Fat and the Thin».

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