Books by Emile Zola

Recently adapted for BBC Television, The Ladies' Paradise evokes the giddy pace of Paris's transition into a modern city and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century.

Provides a detailed portrait of provincial nineteenth-century life. Adhering to a naturalist approach, this book eschews many of the characteristics of the author's other novels of the "Rougon-Macquart" cycle - such as a pronounced polemical agenda or a gritty subject matter - offering instead a lyrical tale of love and innocence.

The Fortune of the Rougons is the first in Zola's famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels. Not only the inaugural novel, it is the series' founding text, establishing its genealogical basis. The family's greed and rapacity mirrors the diseased society in which it flourishes. This lively new translation is accompanied by introduction and notes.

A short essay and never before published photographs by Emile Zola during his self-imposed exile in England in the late nineteenth-century.

Florent Quenu returns to Paris after being unjustly imprisoned and finds the city utterly changed. The great new food market, Les Halles, has been built, and food dominates the political and social life of the capital. The third in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, The Belly of Paris appears in a vibrant new translation.

Zola's most acerbic social satire, Pot Luck is set in a newly constructed block of flats in the Rue de Choiseul, Paris. Although it seems a place of prosperity and harmony, it is riddled with snobbery and hypocrisy. Systematically exposing the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life, Zola reveals a multitude of adulteries and betrayals, and depicts a veritable `melting pot' of moral and sexual degeneracy. This new translation captures the directness and robustness of Zola's language, and restores the omissions of earlier abridged versions.

The Kill (La Cur'ee) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire (1852-70) and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure.

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 and class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret, the store''s owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life as much as in business he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified. This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola''s greatest novels of the modern city. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolize the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted `Germinal! Germinal!' The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow-miners in a strike protesting against pay-cuts - a strike which becomes a losing battle against starvation, repression, and sabotage. Yet despite all the violence and disillusion which rock the mining community to its foundations, Lantier retains his belief in the ultimate germination of a new society, leading to a better world. Germinal is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, but it is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigour and power in this new translation. It is the thirteenth book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, which celebrates its centenary in October 1993 with a new film version of the novel, starring G¿rd Depardieu.

'Therese Raquin' is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower orders in nineteenth-century Paris. Zola's dispassionate dissection of the motivations of his characters, mere 'human beasts' who kill in order to satisfy their lust, is much more than an atmospheric Second Empire period-piece. 'Therese Raquin' stands as a key early manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which Zola was the founding father. Even today, this novel has lost none of its power to shock.

A story of lust, madness and destruction set within the backstreets of Paris. Based on Emile Zola's classic novel.

Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past. The only way he can rest is by forcing her to help him murder the man involved, but there is a witness - Jacques Lantier, a fellow railway employee.

Emile Zola's own stage adaptation of his taut, psychological thriller. An intense story of adultery, murder and revenge, streaked with social satire, in a translation by Pip Broughton.

Now the basis for the major BBC tv adaptation The Paradise, this is a lavish drama and a timeless commentary on consumerism. The Penguin Classics edition of emile Zola's The Ladies' Delight is based on an acclaimed, vivid and modern translation by Robin Buss, who has also introduced the novel.The Ladies' Delight is the glittering Paris department store run by Octave Mouret. He has used charm and drive to become director of this mighty emporium, unscrupulously exploiting his young female staff and seducing his lady customers with luxurious displays of shimmering silks, satins, velvets and lace. Then Denise Baudu, a na ve provincial girl, becomes an assistant at the store - and Mouret discovers that he in turn can also be enchanted. With its greedy customers, gossiping staff and vibrant sense of theatre, The Ladies' Delight (Au Bonheur des Dames in the original French) is one of the most richly exciting novels in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart cycle.This edition also contains a bibliography, introduction, chronology and explanatory notes.Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years, including Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), The Beast Within (1890), Nana (1880), and The Drinking Den (1877).'A complete page-turner about the consumer society, greed, fashion and instant gratification'India Knight'A fine translation'The Times Literary Supplement

Considered by Andr Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty and wretchedness of a mining community in northern France under the second empire. At the centre of the novel is Etienne Lantier, a handsome 21 year-old mechanic, intelligent but with little education and a dangerous predisposition to murderous, alcoholic rage. Germinal tells the parallel story of Etienne's refusal to accept what he appears destined to become, and of the miners' difficult decision to strike in order to fight for a better standard of life.

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.

In the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. Therese Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867 and borught its twenty-seven-year-old author a notoriety that followed him throughout his life.

Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the The tre des Varietes. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her day. Rich men, Comtes and Marquises fall at her feet, great ladies try to emulate her appearance, lovers even kill themselves for her. Nana's hedonistic appetite for luxury and decadent pleasures knows no bounds - until, eventually, it consumes her. Nana provoked outrage on its publication in 1880, with its heroine damned as 'the most crude and bestial sort of whore', yes the language of the novel makes Nana almost a mythical figure: a destructive force preying on a corrupt society.

Industrialiseringen bruser der ud af i begyndelsen af 1900-tallet. Samfundsrevseren Zola skildrer her på naturalistisk vis den menneskelige fornedrelse der bliver en følge heraf. Vi er på det kæmpemæssige jernstøberi kaldet "Afgrunden" hvor der støbes kanoner til den snart forestående krig. Titlen "arbejde" skal her forstås som ikke alene det menneskelig, men tillige det arbejde maskinerne udfører - maskinerne og teknikken spiller nemlig her en stor rolle.

Den franske forfatter Emile Zola er en stor naturalist og en "borgerlig rebel", en samfundsengageret forfatter, der bruger kunsten til at afsløre ubekvemme sandheder. Han var også kendt for at foretage et omhyggeligt forarbejde inden han gav sig i lag med romaner der foregår i bestemte miljøer, her f. eks. i variete- og teaterverdenen med samt cafe- og restaurationslivet og alt hvad deraf følger. Vi følger den 15-årige Nana fra hendes opstigen i teaterverdenen til hendes endelige nedtur.

Emile Zolas klassiske roman om den purunge prostituerede Nana, hendes opstigning og fald, der samtidig er et billede på datidens Frankrig.

Hélène Mouret flyttar till Paris tillsammans med sin man och sin sjukliga dotter. Hennes man går strax därefter bort och Hélène blir änka. Hélène måste snart kämpa mot en omöjlig passion, samtidigt som hon bevakas av sin dotters svartsjuka blickar. Romanen skildrar en kvinnas kamp och tecknar ett fint porträtt av ett känsligt barns inträde i puberteten.I originalöversättning av Hilda Sachs.Émile Zola (1840-1902) var författare och journalist. Zola var naturalismens förgrundsfigur och en av de mest utgivna, översatta och kommenterade författarna i världen.

Her kommer man virkelig ind i kunstnermiljøet i sluningen af det nittende århundrede, hvor der virkelig skete ting og sager - hvor kunsten gjaldt liv eller død. Zola skildrer det på sin egen social-realistiske måde og glimrende er hans beskirvelse af Paris på den tid med alle sine glæder og sorger og sin fattigdom.

Gervaise Macquart har ikke mange krav til et lykkeligt liv: at have et arbejde, kunne tjene det daglige brød, have et lille værelse og et beskedent bohave for sig selv, kunne opdrage sine børn, ikke at få prygl og at dø i sin egen seng. Da hendes mand, Auguste Lantier, forlader hende og deres to børn efter at have sendt hende til lånekontoret med de sidste pjalter, ser det håbløst ud, men hun klarer sig, og slår sig sammen med blikkenslageren Coupeau, der har fast arbejde, ikke drikker, og ikke er voldelig. Sammen får de sparet så meget sammen, at Gervaise kan åbne et strygeri med flere medarbejdere.En dag falder Coupeau imidlertid ned fra det tag, hvor han er ved at lægge zinkplader, og under rekonvalescensen får han smag for lediggang og værtshusbesøg, og det er starten på en stadigt accelererende spiral mod den yderste ruin og fornedrelse for parret.Gervaise får med Coupeau datteren Anna, kaldet Nana, der er hovedperson i den vel mest kendte roman af samme navn i Rougon-Macquart-cyklussen. Man får i Faldgruben i glimt billeder fra Nanas opvækst og starten på hendes karriere som luksusskøge.Bind 13 i serien Les Rougon-Macquart