Zola: 989 books

"'Lourdes' came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 I happened to be travelling for my pleasure, with my wife, in the Basque country and by the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes, included it in my tour. I spent fifteen days there, and was greatly struck by what I saw, and...

'He thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.' Set in the fictitious Provençal town of Plassans, The Fortune of the Rougons tells the story of Silvère and Miette, two idealistic young supporters...

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...

This file includes three 19th century novels about prostitutes: Maggie by Stephen Crane and (in English translation) L'Assommir and Nana by Zola.

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:...

Set in the taverns of Paris, this is perhaps the first classical tragedy of working-class people living in the slums of a city. The Drinking Den (1877) is part of the Rougon-Macquart series, a naturalistic history of two branches of a family traced through several generations. Zola's work was influenced...

“The Downfall”, La Débâcle is a novel by Émile Zola published in 1892, the penultimate in les Rougon-Macquart series. The story is set against the background of the political and military events that ended the reign of Napoléon III and the Second Empire in 1870, in particular the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells how the heroine and her lover, Laurent, kill her husband, Camille, but are subsequently haunted by visions of the dead man and prevented from enjoying the fruits of their...

In these three short stories, Émile Zola presents characters in search of fulfillment—romantic, religious, and financial. Read together, they give us an extraordinary depiction of sexual mores. When the apparently angelic Thérèse commits murder, she offers sexual favors to a petty clerk if he...

Germinal is a French writer Émile Zola novel. The story is set in France during the second industrial revolution. The plot takes place in the mining area of northern France and describes the hard life of the miners of the second industrial revolution, as well as the political organization of the...

‘La taberna’ apareció por vez primera en 1877 y constituyó el primer gran éxito del novelista y una importante inyección económica. El autor se convirtió en una celebridad literaria y a su alrededor se agruparon una serie de escritores que se decían discípulos suyos. Definida por el propio Zola como...

Alegato en favor del capitán Alfred Dreyfus, dirigido por Émile Zola mediante una carta abierta al presidente de Francia, M. Félix Faure, y publicado por el diario L'Aurore el 13 de enero de 1898 en su primera plana.

Thérèse Raquin (1867) fue la cuarta novela de Émile Zola y la primera en la que tomó forma literaria el ideario naturalista. A partir de un trágico suceso ampliamente comentado en la prensa de la época, narra una historia de pasión irreprimible, adulterio, asesinato y remordimiento en una oscura...

El maquinista Étienne Lantier llega al pueblo minero de Montsou en busca de trabajo. Lleno de indignación ante la miseria que rodea el mundo de las minas, promueve la lucha contra la Compañía alzándose en cabecilla de una protesta que acabará convirtiéndose en un torrente de violencia devastadora. Emile...