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...
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 ...
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. Set in the fictitious Provencal town of Plassans, The Fortune of the Rougons tells the story of Silvere and Miette, two idealistic young supporters of the republican resistance to Louis-Napoleon...
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 ...
Finding the young Angelique on their doorstep one Christmas Eve, the pious Hubert couple decide to bring her up as their own. As the girl grows up in the vicinity of the town's towering cathedral and learns her parents' trade of embroidery, she becomes increasingly fascinated by the lives of the saints, a passion fuelled by her reading of the 'Golden Legend' and other mystical Christian writings. One day love, in the shape of Felicien Hautocoeur, enters the dream world she has constructed around herself, bringing about upheaval and distress. Although it provides a detailed portrait of...
Finding the young Angelique on their doorstep one Christmas Eve, the pious Hubert couple decide to bring her up as their own. As the girl grows up in ...
'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...
'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 fa...
'Abbe Faujas has arrived ' The arrival of Abbe Faujas in the provincial town of Plassans has profound consequences for the community, and for the family of Franois Mouret in particular. Faujas and his mother come to lodge with Franois, his wife Marthe, and their three children, and Marthe quickly falls under the influence of the priest. Ambitious and unscrupulous, Faujas gradually infiltrates into all quarters of the town, intent on political as well as religious conquest. Intrigue, slander, and insinuation tear the townsfolk apart, creating suspicion and distrust, and driving the Mourets to...
'Abbe Faujas has arrived ' The arrival of Abbe Faujas in the provincial town of Plassans has profound consequences for the community, and for the fami...
Adam Thorpe's unflinching translation brings Zola's dark and shocking masterwork to life
"Mysterious disappearances, domestic cases, noiseless, bloodless snuffings-out . . . the law can look as deep as it likes, but when the crime itself goes unsuspected . . . oh yes, there's many a murderer basking in the sun . . . "
When Therese Raquin is forced to marry the sickly Camille, she sees a bare life stretching out before her, leading every evening to the same cold bed and every morning to the same empty day. Escape comes in the form of her husband's friend, Laurent, and Therese throws...
Adam Thorpe's unflinching translation brings Zola's dark and shocking masterwork to life
'Only the earth is immortal...the earth we love enough to commit murder for her.' Zola's novel of peasant life, the fifteenth in the Rougon-Macquart series, is generally regarded as one of his finest achievements, comparable to Germinal and L'Assommoir. Set in a village in the Beauce, in northern France, it depicts the harshness of the peasants' world and their visceral attachment to the land. Jean Macquart, a veteran of the battle of Solferino and now an itinerant farm labourer, is drawn into the affairs of the Fouan family when he starts courting young...
'Only the earth is immortal...the earth we love enough to commit murder for her.' Zola's novel of peasant life, the fifteenth in ...
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...
Now bankrupt after some failed gambles, Aristide Saccard, the former kingpin of the Paris Stock Exchange, desperately wants to get back to the top ...
