L'Assommoir (Everyman Paperback Classics)

Name: L'Assommoir (Everyman Paperback Classics)
Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780460875769

by Unknown Author

4.2

(5 ratings)

437 pages1995Tuttle PublishingISBN 9780460875769

Fiction

About this book

L'Assommoir is a study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris. Gervaise Macquart, who is featured briefly in the first novel in the series, La Fortune des Rougon, is running away to Paris with her shiftless lover Lantier to work as a washerwoman in a hot, busy laundry. After Lantier leaves her, she swears to never fall in love again. Until she meets Coupeau, a teetotal roofer and loving partner, whom she marries. Gervaise is enjoying the highs and lives her dream life as she opens her own laundry and their daughter Anna (nicknamed Nana) is born. Later Coupeau suffers an injury und gives up to the alcoholism. From that moment their life goes downward, experiencing several embarassing failures, ending up with irreparable debt and irrecoverable tragedies.

Publication Details

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Published: 1995
Pages: 437
ISBN: 9780460875769
Language: en

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