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"Its force of impact, its narrative muscle and its psychological
clarity make it still, nearly 150 years on, one of the most
shocking books in the canon." --Julian Barnes A BRAND NEW
TRANSLATION BY ADAM THORPE
"I recall the long hours I sat for him... From time to time, as I posed, half-asleep, I looked at the artist standing at his easel, with features drawn, clear-eyed, engrossed in his work. He had forgotten me, he no longer knew I was there, he simply copied me, as if I were some kind of human beast, with a concentration and artistic integrity that I have seen nowhere else." Zola's writings on Manet, the most important of which are presented in this volume, were the first to identify the painter's seminal role in the emergence of modern art.
'She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.' Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris. A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress. Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared. Nana is the ninth instalment in the twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The novel opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was la Ville Lumiere, the glittering setting-and object-of Zola's scathing denunciation of society's hypocrisy and moral corruption. Nana comes to symbolize the Second Empire regime itself in all its excesses; but in the final chapters, the narrator seems to suggest that the coming disaster is not so much a result of the corruption of the Empire, as of rampant female sexuality.
'There's something of everything there, the best and the worst, the vulgar and the sublime, flowers, muck, tears, laughter, the river of life itself' Pascal Rougon has served as a doctor in the rural French town of Plassans for thirty years. He lives a quiet life with his faithful servant Martine and young niece Clotilde. Pascal is a man of science, striving to find the ultimate cure for all diseases. This puts him at odds with his niece, who is horrified by his denial of religious faith. Clotilde also distrusts Pascal's lifelong ambition to create a family tree on scientific principles, based upon his theories of heredity. Tensions in the household are fuelled by Pascal's scheming mother, Felicite, as the final episode in the great Rougon-Macquart saga plays out. Dr Pascal is the passionate conclusion to Zola's twenty-novel sequence, and the most eloquent expression of the ideas on heredity and human progress that have underpinned it. Human relations are at its heart, as Pascal and Clotilde are bound ever closer by ties of family and love.
Unjustly deported to Devil's Island following Louis-Napoleon's
coup-d'etat in December 1851, Florent Quenu escapes and returns to
Paris. He finds the city changed beyond recognition. The old Marche
des Innocents has been knocked down as part of Haussmann's grand
program of urban reconstruction, replaced by Les Halles, the
spectacular new food markets. Disgusted by a bourgeois society
whose devotion to food is inseparable from its devotion to the
Government, Florent attempts an insurrection. Les Halles,
apocalyptic and destructive, play an active role in Zola's picture
of a world in which food and the injustice of society are
inextricably linked.
The Fortune of the Rougons is the first in Zola's famous
Rougon-Macquart series of novels. In it we learn how the two
branches of the family came about, and the origins of the
hereditary weaknesses passed down the generations. Murder,
treachery, and greed are the keynotes, and just as the Empire was
established through violence, the "fortune" of the Rougons is paid
for in blood.
'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.
A story of lust, madness and destruction set in the backstreets of Paris. Based on Emile Zola's classic novel. The beautiful but doomed heroine is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. Every Thursday evening she watches her domineering aunt, Madame Raquin, play dominoes... until one day her husband brings along an old friend, the alluring and athletic Laurent. As Laurent and The re se embark on an illicit affair, a turbulent passion is unleashed that drives them ultimately to violence and murder. Helen Edmundson's sensuous adaptation of Therese Raquin premiered at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in July 2014. It was later seen on Broadway in a production starring Keira Knightley.
Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his `most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Pot Luck, Zola's most acerbic satire, describes daily life in a
newly constructed block of flats in late nineteenth-century Paris.
In examining the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life, Zola
reveals a multitude of betrayals and depicts a veritable 'melting
pot' of moral and sexual degeneracy. This new translation captures
the robustness of Zola's language and restores the omissions of
earlier abridged versions.
'Everything revolved around their love. They were constantly bathed in a passion that they carried with them, around them, as though it were the only air they could breathe.' Helene Grandjean, an attractive young widow, lives a secluded life in Paris with her only child, Jeanne. Jeanne is a delicate and nervous girl who jealously guards her mother's affections. When Jeanne falls ill, she is attended by Dr Deberle, whose growing admiration for Helene gradually turns into mutual passion. Deberle's wife Juliette, meanwhile, flirts with a shallow admirer, and Helene, intent on preventing her adultery, precipitates a crisis whose consequences are far-reaching. Jeanne realizes she has a rival for Helene's devotion in the doctor, and begins to exercise a tyrannous hold over her mother. The eighth novel in Zola's celebrated Rougon-Macquart series, A Love Story is an intense psychological and nuanced portrayal of love's different guises. Zola's study extends most notably to the city of Paris itself, whose shifting moods reflect Helene's emotional turmoil in passages of extraordinary lyrical description.
The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life as much as in business he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified. This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Considered by Andre Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Emile Zola's Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty of a mining community in northern France Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Compelled to take a back-breakin job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all. The thirteenth novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity's capacity for compassion and hope. Translated with an introduction by Roger Pearson in Penguin Classics If you enjoyed Germinal, you might like Zola's Therese Raquin, also available in Penguin Classics.
'Neither spoke another word, they were gripped by a shared, unthinking madness as they plunged headlong together into vertiginous rapture.' Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens the household and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually Madame Chanteau starts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head. The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulent relations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.
'I really don't understand how people can blame a priest so much, when he strays from the path.' The Sin of AbbA (c) Mouret tells the compelling story of the young priest Serge Mouret. Striving after spiritual purity and sanctity, he lives a life of constant prayer, but his neglect of all physical needs leads to serious illness, followed by amnesia. No longer knowing he is a priest, he falls in love with his nurse Albine. Together, like a latter-day Adam and Eve, they roam through an Eden-like garden called the 'Paradou', seeking a forbidden tree in whose shade they will make love. Zola memorably shows their gradual awakening to sexuality, and his poetic descriptions of the luxuriant and beautiful Paradou create a lyrical celebration of Nature. When Serge regains his memory and recalls his priestly vows, anguish inevitably follows. The whole story, with its numerous biblical parallels, becomes a poetic reworking of the Fall of Man and a questioning of the very meaning of innocence and sin. Zola explores the conflict between Church and Nature, the sterility of the Church and the fertility of Nature. This new translation includes a wide-ranging and helpful introduction and explanatory notes.
'The irresistible power of money, a lever that can lift the world. Love and money are the only things.' Aristide Rougon, known as Saccard, is a failed property speculator determined to make his way once more in Paris. Unscrupulous, seductive, and with unbounded ambition, he schemes and manipulates his way to power. Financial undertakings in the Middle East lead to the establishment of a powerful new bank and speculation on the stock market; Saccard meanwhile conducts his love life as energetically as he does his business, and his empire is seemingly unstoppable. Saccard, last encountered in The Kill (La Curee) in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, is a complex figure whose story intricately intertwines the worlds of politics, finance, and the press. The repercussions of his dealings on all levels of society resonate disturbingly with the financial scandals of more recent times. This is the first new translation for more than a hundred years, and the first unabridged translation in English. The edition includes a wide-ranging introduction and useful historical notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'in this life, even if you don't ask for much you still end up with bugger all!' In a run-down quarter of Paris, Gervaise Macquart struggles to earn a living and support her family. She earns a pittance washing other people's dirty clothes in the local washhouse, and dreams of having her own laundry. But in order to start her business she must incur debt, and her feckless husband cannot resist the lure of the Assommoir, the local bar that supplies all the working men with cheap spirits and absinthe. As her money troubles grow, so Gervaise's life begins to spiral out of control, and she is trapped in a vicious web of want and neglect. The Assommoir is a pivotal novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. In it he lays bare the terrible poverty of the Parisian underclass, living in overcrowded tenements, addicted to drink, a world of squalor, and casual violence. It contains some of Zola's most powerful and graphic writing, unforgettable portrayals of individuals and their environment, and the fine line between self-respect and ruin.
Now bankrupt after some failed gambles, Aristide Saccard, the former kingpin of the Paris Stock Exchange, desperately wants to get back to the top of the financial pile. When his powerful brother, the government minister Eugene Rougon, refuses to help him, he forms a partnership with the engineer Hamelin and founds the Banque Universelle, which speculates on public works in the Middle East. But as his greed and desire to outplay his rivals gets the better of him, the dashing and ruthless Saccard perilously begins to inflate the value of his enterprise using rumour, intrigue, financial manipulation and all the other tricks in the book. Inspired by real events and meticulously researched by Zola, Money is, in the wake of recent financial scandals, an all-too-topical exploration of the dynamics of greed, the excesses of capitalism and its dangerous relationship with politics and the press.
1924. With an essay by Francis Gribble. Zola, French writer, critic and leader of the naturalist school. Zola's work often portray groups of humans in the grip of circumstances beyond their control, often destined to be destroyed in monumental catastrophes. His masterpiece Germinal was an eloquent protest against the inhuman working conditions common in late Nineteenth-Century European factories and mines. In the story, Etienne Lantier is an out-of-work railway worker who by sheer luck has secured a job in the coal mine called Le Voreux (a name suggesting a voracious beast which consumes workers wholesale). As a newcomer he attempts improvement through worker resistance, including a strike with unforeseen and tragic consequences. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
Madeleine Ferat (1868) is a novel by French author Emile Zola. Following the success of his third novel, Therese Raquin (1867), Zola published Madeleine Ferat to lukewarm critical acclaim. Intent on exploring taboo and the lives of people on the edge of society, Zola crafts a narrative capable of illuminating the human condition while humanizing those typically disdained by the literary elite. In 1920, Madeleine Ferat was adapted into an Italian silent film starring Francesca Bertini. To anyone who makes their acquaintance, Guillaume and Madeleine have a storybook romance-marriage, a child, the inheritance of a beautiful villa and a sizeable fortune; these things and more bless their family from the start and promise a lengthy, healthy relationship. As Madeleine adjusts to the comforts and curiosities of married life, she finds herself emboldened to share aspects of her personal history with Guillaume. One night, she decides to tell him a story involving a former lover, sparing no details on their sexual relationship. To her horror, she discovers that her lover was once Guillaume's best friend. Rather than amusing her husband, she shatters their idyllic existence, plunging him into doubt and despair while exposing herself to his hidden vindictive side. Madeleine Ferat is a story of love, secrets, and the false promise of modern life. Written at the very beginning of Zola's career, it shows the innerworkings of a young mind interested in subjects too often ignored by writers, a mind whose guiding principle is truth and truth alone. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emile Zola's Madeleine Ferat is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
The Rush for the Spoil (1872) is a novel by French author Emile Zola. The second of twenty volumes of Zola's monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to the heart of heredity and human nature. Aristide Saccard is the son of Pierre Rougon, a man born into poverty who rose through vanity and shear opportunism to a position of power in the France of Napoleon III. After a rakish youth, Aristide promises his brother Eugene, a prominent politician, that he will make his way in the world under a different surname. Destined for failure, he manages to gain funding for a scheme involving the purchase of homes destined for demolition. Collecting government compensation for each property, Aristide turns a handsome profit and eventually becomes one of the richest men in Paris. When his wife becomes terminally ill, he decides to sacrifice the last of his morality by marrying a wealthy pregnant woman, whose father has promised an immense dowry. As the years go by, his fragmented family suffers under the weight of their father's impropriety, illuminating the hypocrisy and obscenity of wealth in nineteenth century France. The Rush for the Spoil is a story of family and fate, a thrilling and detailed novel that continues a series rich enough for its author to explore in twenty total volumes. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emile Zola's The Rush for the Spoil is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
The Experimental Novel (1880) is an essay by French author Emile Zola. Written at the height of his career as a leading proponent of Naturalism, The Experimental Novel serves to illuminate the author's approach to the practice and purpose of writing while advocating for a revolution of style among artists of his era. Read as a reaction against Romanticism, The Experimental Novel proves a convincing counterpoint to the excesses and failures of nineteenth century art, illustrating the need for literature to draw inspiration from other sources of human understanding-such as science, history, and the social sciences-in order to effectively explore the themes of everyday life. "The return to nature, the naturalistic evolution which marks the century, drives little by little all the manifestation of human intelligence into the same scientific path. Only the idea of a literature governed by science is doubtless a surprise, until explained with precision and understood. It seems to me necessary, then, to say briefly and to the point what I understand by the experimental novel." Rather than imitate reality, a writer must attempt a scientific investigation of the nature of everyday life. For Zola, plot must be secondary to character, and character must be subject to the laws and limitations of a particular society. As a writer interested in the relationships between rich and poor, citizen and state, culture and economy, and personal and public life, Zola found it necessary to write experimental fiction-literally, fiction which experiments with its object of inquiry. Blending science and art, he revolutionized not only the idea of what a novel is and can do, but the responsibility of the artist to society. The Experimental Novel is a masterful essay for readers interested in Zola's work and in the history and philosophy of literature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emile Zola's The Experimental Novel is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
Therese Raquin (1867) is a novel by French author Emile Zola. Initially serialized in L'Artiste, a popular French literary magazine, Therese Raquin, Zola's third novel, earned the author widespread fame and critical condemnation for its scandalous content and unsparing vision of human sexuality and violence. Therese Raquin effectively launched Zola's career as a leading practitioner of literary naturalism, and has since been adapted countless times for theater, television, and film. Therese Raquin, the daughter of an Algerian mother and French father, is raised by her aunt, Madame Raquin, whose overbearing nature has turned her son Camille into a reclusive hypochondriac. Despite growing up like a sibling to Camille, Therese is forced by her aunt to marry him at the age of 21, thereby relinquishing her autonomy as a young, ambitious woman. Desperate for change, she suggests they move to Paris together, where the two women run a shop while Camille searches for his first job. In the French capital, Camille runs into an old friend, Laurent, who eventually falls in love with the unsuspecting man's unhappy wife. Overwhelmed with desire, desperate for affection, Therese not only begins in an affair with Laurent, but considers the prospect of murdering her husband in order to free herself. During a boat trip, the two lovers seize their chance, but the consequences of their decision relentlessly follow them, leaving them haunted in dreams and in life by the man they thought they had lost. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
A Page of Love (1878) is a novel by French author Emile Zola. The eighth of twenty volumes of Zola's monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to the heart of heredity and human nature. Helene Grandjean, a member of the Mouret family, finds herself desperate and alone when her husband Charles dies from a sudden illness. Left as the sole guardian of her young daughter Jeanne, she does her best to provide while overcoming the boundaries of life in a strange new town. Having moved from Marseilles to the suburbs of Paris only days before Charles' death, Helene longs for friendship and community. When Jeanne suffers a violent seizure, she receives assistance from her neighbor, Dr. Deberle. Soon, Helene befriends Deberle and his wife Juliette, who introduce her to their family and small circle of acquaintances. Although she remains wary of romance, Helene soon finds herself falling in love with a kind and gentle man, a figure capable of caring for her and her young daughter-a man who is already married. A Page of Love is a story of family and fate, a thrilling and detailed novel that continues a series rich enough for its author to explore in twenty total volumes. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emile Zola's A Page of Love is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers. |
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