The Fortune of the Rougons

by Emile Zola

Overview

This is the first volume in the Rougon-Macquart series. This series brought Zola literary fame and is considered his life work. It took 25 years to finish the 20 volumes. The idea for writing the social history of a family encompassing several volumes probably came from his reading the works of Balzac. Zola shows how people in a family who appear to be quite individualistic actually are quite similar. Heredity and proximity determine who we are and how we act.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783732617807
Publisher:	Salzwasser-Verlag Gmbh
Publication date:	12/03/2017
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.