"The Downfall (La Débâcle)" is Émile Zola's 1892 novel, the penultimate in the Rougon-Macquart series, which is a story set against the background of the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune, events that led to the end of the reign of Napoléon III and the Second French Empire in 1870. The novel follows Jean Macquart, a corporal in the French army corps, as they are driven back by the Prussians deeper and deeper into France....

The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist who has come from the provinces to conquer Paris but is conquered instead by the flaws of his own genius. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It provides a unique insight into Zola's career as a writer and his relationship with Cezanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence....

Zola's The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames, 1883) plays out in a colossal and opulent Parisian department store of the same name. Its owner, Octave Mouret, builds his innovative, upmarket women's fashion empire at the expense of the city's smaller, traditional shops. A self-declared manipulator of women, Mouret not only plays on his female customers' personal insecurities and social aspirations to keep his takings high, but also exploits his...

Living in the pleasure-loving society of Napoleon III's France is a beautiful, capricious, good-natured yet noxious prostitute named Nana. For her, rich men give up their fortunes and honor; poor men give up their mates and even their lives.

The Beast Within (1890) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. The seventeenth of twenty volumes of Zola's monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to...

Une édition de référence de Nana d'Émile Zola, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « Un murmure grandit, comme un soupir qui se gonflait. Quelques mains battirent, toutes les jumelles étaient fixées sur Vénus. Peu à peu, Nana avait pris possession du public, et maintenant chaque homme la subissait. Le rut qui montait d'elle, ainsi que d'une bête en folie, s'était épandu toujours davantage, emplissant la...

A Page of Love (1878) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. The eighth of twenty volumes of Zola's monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to the heart...

Une édition de référence de La Curée d'Émile Zola, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « Renée, dans ses satiétés, éprouva une singulière sensation de désirs inavouables, à voir ce paysage qu'elle ne reconnaissait plus, cette nature si artistement mondaine, et dont la grande nuit frissonnante faisait un bois sacré, une de ces clairières idéales au fond desquelles les anciens dieux cachaient leurs amours...

Une édition de référence de Le Ventre de Paris d'Émile Zola, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « Non, la faim ne l'avait pas quitté. Il fouillait ses souvenirs, ne se rappelait pas une heure de plénitude. Il était devenu sec, l'estomac rétréci, la peau collée aux os. Et il retrouvait Paris, gras, superbe, débordant de nourriture, au fond des ténèbres ; il y rentrait, sur un lit de légumes ; il y roulait,...

Against the backdrop of political and legal corruption in Second Empire France, La Bête Humaine (1890) contrasts the technological advancements of the Machine Age with the primitive and timeless human impulse to possess through killing and to kill through possession. The lives of two railwaymen on the Paris to Le Havre line are fatally entwined by their love for the same woman in this shocking account of brutal violence, greed, revenge and repression....