L'Assommoir tracks the downfall of Gervaise and Coupeau, a couple living in Paris during the mid nineteenth century. The trauma they experience as members of an underclass inevitably kills them, with alcoholism afflicting both Gervaise and Coupeau by the end of the novel.
Emile Zola is one of the most important nineteenth-century French novelists, along with Stendhal, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert. Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893; translate...
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The French novelist Émile Zola (1840-1902) was the foremost proponent of the doctrine of naturalism in literature. He illustrated this doctrine chiefly in a series of 20 novels published betwee...
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Emile (Edouard Charles Antoine) Zola
Émile Zola