Cover of The Belly of Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

The Belly of Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

by Unknown Author

320 pages2007Oxford University Press, USAISBN 9780192806338

About this book

In this novel the author chooses as his locale the newly built food markets of Paris. Into this extravagance of food - which Zola describes in set pieces that wet the tongue, excite the ear, and stir up the belly - he places his young hero, the half-starved Florent, who has just escaped imprisonment in Cayenne. Florent finds himself at odds with a world he now knows is unjust. Gradually he takes up with the local Socialists, who are more at home in bars than on the revolutionary streets.

Publication Details

Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Published
2007
Pages
320
ISBN
9780192806338

About Unknown Author

Emile Zola was a French journalist and novelist known for his series of 20 novels known collectively as Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-93). Zola's style was called literary naturalism; his novels were attacked and even banned for their frankness and sordid detail, and caused quite a bit of controversy in their day. The same traits made him a best-selling author and a star of French literature in his day. In 1898 he then further incurred the wrath of French officials when he published the open letter "J'Accuse," in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, an Army officer who had been convicted of treason. Zola was sentenced to prison for libel, fled to England, and was granted amnesty a few months later. He died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning -- the victim of a stopped-up chimney -- a few months before Dreyfus was officially exonerated. [(Source)][1] [1]: http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/emilezola.html

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