Cover of L'Assommoir by Emile Zola Ebook L'Assommoir
Ebook · Sovereign

L'Assommoir

Author
Emile Zola
Series
World Classics
Language
English
Length
374 pages
ISBN
9781909904927
Published
15 November 2013
Imprint
Sovereign
  • Emile Zola
  • Zola
  • naturalism
  • alcoholism
  • alcohol
  • establishment
  • challenge
  • social order
  • realism
  • France

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Description

The story of Gervaise Macquart, running away to Paris with her shiftless lover Lantier to work as a washerwoman in a hot, busy laundry in one of the seedier areas of the city. The novel considered one of Zola's masterpieces, a study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris. It established Zola's fame and reputation throughout France and the world.

Author

Emile Zola (1840–1902) grew up in Aix-en-Provence, failed his baccalaureat, and then mapped a France under pressure in the twenty novels of the Rougon-Macquart. L'Assommoir is drink and a Paris street; Germinal is the mine, the strike, the dark that works. He stood up for Dreyfus in J'Accuse...! and paid in exile. Naturalism was the method: heredity, milieu, a crowd that behaves like weather. The accusation is documentary.

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