The first of a series of more than twenty novels, "The Fortune of the Rougons" presents the passions and conflicts of two families -- one wealthy and aiming at the aristocracy, the other working-class and in desperate poverty -- in a French village in the years leading up to Napoleon III's coup against the weak French republic and the triumph of his Second Empire. The great political tides of their time flow in, mingling national rivalries with the personal and familial passions of the one town and two families. Zola ties together the triumph of schemers on the national level with the victory...

Raised alongside her sickly cousin, Therese lives the quietest of lives. Yet something impetuous and wild stirs within her -- as she learns of herself during moments of escape into the countryside.

But now the family is in Paris, taking over a mercer's shop in the dingy Arcade of the Pont Neuf. To appease the aunt who has cared for her, she marries her pale, nerve-wracked cousin. Then a schoolmate of her husband's appears -- almost his complete opposite, with full voice, jovial laughter -- and a strapping build that givers her nervous pangs to contemplate . . .

And a new Therese, one...

Ernest Vizetelly (1853 - 1922) was in France during the Franco-Prussian War and wrote a memoir of his experiences, My days of Adventure; the fall of France, 1870-71, which also contains an autobiographical introduction. Although mostly autobiographical there is a great deal of information about the "People's War" which followed the crash of Sedan and the downfall of the Second French Empire. Vizetelly discusses the outbreak of the Franco-German war, Paris to Versailles, from Versailles to Brittany, the war in the provinces, the "Army of Brittany," LeMans, and the end of the war.

The Fat and the Thin, written by French writer Emile Zola (1840-1902) in 1888. Zola, one of the most influential writers of the literary school of naturalism and a contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism.

The Fortune of the Rougons (French: La Fortune des Rougon), originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Emile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel is partly an origin story, with a huge cast of characters swarming around - many of whom become the central figures of later novels in the series - and partly an account of the December 1851 coup d'etat that created the French Second Empire under Napoleon III as experienced in a large provincial town in southern France.