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Emile Zola was an elegant writer -- more elegant than his reputation as a political firebrand might suggest. Zola's most famous work was a newspaper article: his impassioned defense of imprisoned Captain Alfred Dreyfus, "J'accuse." Rome is the second volume of The Three Cities (Les Trois Villes), first published in 1896. The first volume tells of the troubled priest Pierre Froment's journey to Lourdes, hoping to find a cure for his spiritual doubts. In Rome, Pierre travels to the Holy City, hoping to persuade the Pope to approve of his Christian, socialist theories. The final book of the trilogy, Paris, tells of Pierre's return to the City of Light, watching the fall of Catholicism, and the rise of Pierre's new "faith" of scientific rationalism. A continuation of Zola's great twenty-novel sequence, Les Rougon-Macquart, among which are Nana, Germinal, and La Débâcle, Rome is a book written by Zola at the end of his career, during which his powers were thought to be at their highest. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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In the five stories in this volume, Emile Zola describes the circumstances surrounding the deaths of five people from very different social contexts. A nobleman, a person from the upper middle class, a small businessman, a jobber, and a peasant-all of whom have reached the end of their lives-as well as their family members, are the heroes of these detailed and soberly narrated stories. --- A literary study of the social differences and the value of life in France at the end of the 19th Century from the viewpoint of the 'Master of Naturalism'. ... Read more

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Translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

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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 by contemporary theories of heredity and experimental science, and the behaviour of the two families is shown to be conditioned by environment and inherited characteristics, chiefly drunkenness and mental instability. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY
This book actually kept me awake at night! The story is so dramatic that I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling so sorry for Gervaise. For me reading this book was a similar experience to reading Dickens's David Copperfield, one of my favorite books. It doesn't matter that they were written over 100 years ago, the writing is so vivid that you feel you are getting a picture of the life of the lower classes in England (Dickens) and Paris (Zola).

The Drinking Den is Zola's guided tour through the inferno of nineteenth century Parisian poverty
Emile Zola 91840-1902) is one of the greatest French authors of the literary movement called Naturalism. In his many works Zola explores all of French society in graphic detail using slang, profanity, degradation and vice. This 1876 work "The Drinking Den" (the title has been variously translated through the years) is a graphic account of the life of a poor Parisian washerwoman named Gervaise.
Gervaise arrives in Paris with her lover the odious Lantier. He leaves her and their two children for the readily available drinking dens and fleshpots of the City of Light.Gervaise falls in love and marries a reputable roofer named Coupeau. Although Gervaise does not get on well with Coupeau's new family the couple produce a child Nana and live a relatively happy life.All of this changes with dramatic force when Coupeau falls from a roof making it impossible for him to work full time.
Gervaise opens her own laundry but the years take their toll. At the novel's end she dies a drunken obese old woman scorned by society and her family. Their daughter Nana lives the life of a prostitute. Prior to the sad end the unfortuante Gervaise was involved in a seedy menage a trois with Lantier and Coupeau!
In the Penguin translation their are many expletives which are used and scenes of bawdy drunken and brutal behavior. A touching character is a young girl who dies at the age of eight. The girl had been viciously beaten by her father as she sought to protect her younger siblings from his wrathful behavior.
If you want to be cheered up look elsewhere! Naturalism is gritty and shows life without illusion. Zola was a defender of Dreyfus and a champion for the poor. His style is journalistic and almost scientific in the way his characters are examined under the literary microscope he uses with genius.

For those who love Zola -- Excellent!
Zola is not for everyone, it can be difficult to get through at times, but this is definately one of the best in the R-M cycle. Incredibly interesting descriptions of people and Paris. I liked this Penguin translation much better than the Oxford edition (very British). ... Read more

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This is a documentary-style account of political unrest and personal travail in a late 19th-century French coalfield. Despite the grimness of his subject and the accuracy of his description, Zola tells an irresistible tale above and below ground among the families of Montsou. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Less than perfect quality book
The story itself was great, but the quality of the book was not great. There were a lot of typos, some of them probably due to incompatible computer software as they came back consistently throughout the book - I thought that was pretty lame in this day and age when getting the proper fonts is not that difficult. Also, I found that the pages could get separated from the book very easily, so it needed to be handled with great care.
So I would definitely recommend reading that book, but if possible not in that edition.

Excellent Read - Lighter than other Zola work.
This really is an excellent book.It doesn't get the play of some of Zola's other works but it is an excellent view of the food markets and the people who work in and around this very small section of Paris.It is asometimes sad and sometimes comical view of the shortcomings of everydayworking people - just as true today as when it was written.I found myselfmapping the actions of the central characters to people I had encounteredthrough the years.If you read it I promise you'll find that you have metthese people in your life as I had in mine.It's lighter that Zola's otherwork but just as real.Enjoy! ... Read more

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Originally published in 1903.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great last novel from a great author.
TRUTH is Emile Zola's last novel and was published after his death. It is his longest book and deals with the transformative power of Truth, Justice, and Love. It also deals with how social change happens slowly through generational change rather than by changing
the minds of individuals. It is the story of a teacher in a small French town fighting to prove the innocence of his fellow teacher, a Jew, who is accused of killing a child. The defenders of the teacher have to fight anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, the government, and the press. Written after Zola's return from exile in England for his part in the Dreyfus Affair, the book draws much of its plot from his experiences fighting anti-Semitism. It is a powerful work that shows how anti-Semitism was used by the different factions in 19th CenturyFrance for their own ends.

This is Zola's third anti-clerical work and his strongest. The first two are LOURDES and ROME which deal with a priest's growing disillusion with his church. In TRUTH, the teacher knows that the real murderer is a Christian brother in the local Catholic school who is protected by the local priests. He has to expose the corruption in the church to prove the innocence of his friend. This plot has special relevance to Americans today who are struggling with stories of priests who molested young boys and a Catholic church that protected the priests rather than the children. In the preface written a hundred years ago, the translator states that this abuse by a cleric of a young boy "is not to be regarded as altogether exceptional" since many such crimes are hushed up by friends in the church.

The structure of the novel is well thought out and is composed of four books of four chapters each. Although narrated in the third person, the book is mostly told from the point of view of the teacher. This lack of objectivity is the weakest part of the novel because we only get to see the teacher's opponents through his limited and biased view. The book is Utopian in style with Truth conquering deceit and leading to a more perfect social structure. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

For Zola Fans and Academics
The Zola city trilogy, which I just finished reading, does not rank among Zola's greatest works.They are of interest primarily, I should think, to people who want to understand Zola's feelings and thoughts about science and religion.If you are writing any kind of study of Zola and his works, you MUST read these.But the vast patches of description and the occasional sappy interactions between characters add an all-too-frequent element of impatience and boredom to the experience of ploughing through these works.I am glad I read them, but I wouldn't want to do it again, even though I agree with Zola about the merits of science and the pernicious nature of most religion. ... Read more

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Émile Zola, né à Paris le 2 avril 1840, mort à Paris le 29 septembre 1902, est un écrivain, journaliste et homme public français, considéré comme le chef de file du naturalisme.C’est l'un des romanciers français les plus universellement populaires, l'un des plus publiés et traduits au monde. Ses romans ont connu de très nombreuses adaptations au cinéma et à la télévision. Sa vie et son œuvre ont fait l'objet de nombreuses études historiques. Sur le plan littéraire, il est principalement connu pour Les Rougon-Macquart, fresque romanesque en vingt volumes dépeignant la société française sous le Second Empire. Les dernières années de sa vie ont été marquées par son engagement dans l'affaire Dreyfus avec la publication en janvier 1898, dans le quotidien L'Aurore, de l'article intitulé « J’Accuse…! » qui lui a valu un procès pour diffamation et un exil à Londres.

Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism, an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus. More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution. The series examines two branches of a single family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts, for five generations. From 1877 onwards with the publication of l'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy–he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert. - Wikipedia ... Read more

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J'accuse
A great book full of heartwrenching mellodrama.Greed and incest rear their ugly heads before the backdrop of Haussman's transformation of Paris in the mid 19th century.There is hardly a dull moment in thismasterpiece.I have yet to read more of Zola, but you can bet I've got twoother books by him waiting on my shelf. The story follows an opportunisticprovincial descendant of the Roujon family as he makes his fortune inParis.He heartlessly leaves his first wife to die as he makesarrangements for his second marriage- to a wealthy young woman half hisage.Renee's spirit, already dimmed by a savage rape by a family member isonly tarnished all the more in her extravagant new lifestyle under thenegligent eye of the specuating schemester, Rougon.She falls madly inlove with her efeminate stepson and seals her ruin which concides with theburst of the speculative bubble in Paris real estate. This review was basedon the original French text ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; ... Read more