Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana--the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the [...]

This is a brand new translation by Adam Thorpe. Mysterious disappearances, domestic cases, noiseless, bloodless snuffings-out ...the law can look as deep as it likes, but when the crime itself goes unsuspected ...oh yes, there's many a murderer basking in the sun...When Therese Raquin is forced to m[...]

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 attit[...]

A companion edition to the TV series from Masterpiece on PBS
Through charm, drive, and diligent effort Octave Mouret has become the director of one of the finest new department stores in Paris, Au Bonheur des Dames. Supremely aware of the power of his position, Mouret seeks to exploit the desir[...]

Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre 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 e[...]

Now the basis for the major BBC tv adaptation. "The Paradise", this is a lavish drama and a timeless commentary on consumer capitalism. "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 t[...]

The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist from the provinces who has come to conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws in his own genius. While his boyhood friend Pierre Sandoz becomes a successful novelist, Claude's originality is mocked at the [...]

La Bete humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered th[...]

Pot Luck, Zola's most acerbic satire, describes daily life in a newly constructed block of flats in late nineteenth-century Paris. In examining the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life, Zola reveals a multitude of betrayals and depicts a veritable 'melting pot' of moral and sexual degeneracy. [...]

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 translat[...]

The Ladies' Paradise is a compelling story of ambition and love set against the backdrop of the spectacular rise of the department store in 1860s Paris. Octave Mouret is a business genius who transforms a modest draper's shop into a hugely successful retail enterprise, masterfully exploiting the de[...]