Unlike Dickens' tuburcular heroines, Denise, who indeed suffers what Zola called "poverty in a black silk dress," is plucky, and she ultimately breaks the glass ceiling in her own gentle way. She encounters sexual harassment and somehow triumphs. She is a modern woman, perhaps European literature's first truly modern heroine ever.

This book is one of the best ever written, bar none, and it is light years ahead of its time.

Wonderfull portrayal of the life within one of the first big department store. Great insite on the mid 19th century society in Paris. Zola's best work.

Au Bonheur des Dames is the story of an orphaned young girl Denise. She moves to Paris with her younger siblings to live with her uncle and aunt and immediately is enthralled with the lights and the beauty of the city. She begins work in the store Au Bonheur des Dames and falls in love with its propriator. The novel is a love story but also examines the perpetual battle between the old and the new ways of living. The store Au Bonheur des Dames sells a variety of products while the store of Denise's family is simply a clothing store. Zola's novel is before its time. It accurately describes a social issue of today, the bigger commercial store taking over the small, personalized store.

Sit back and enjoy the ride. From start to finish, this is a fascinating and at times horrfying book.

The Beast In Man was first published in 1890 and is remarkable for its depiction of a world of harsh brutality and the startling frankness of its descriptions of sexual passion.

If ever a book could be described as being ahead of its time, then this is it. Hard-hitting, fast paced, tragic, brutal, erotic and tear jerking, this book has it all.

The plot is exceptional with characters that leap off the page and allow you, the reader, to fully experience their traumatic lives in 19th century France.

All-in-all a fantastic book, written by a true genius who has undoubtedly influenced many of today's most successful scribes.

One of Zola's best and most famous works. There is something strangely fascinating about a murder where the killer escapes detection and punishment only to receive terminal treatment from another, totally unexpected source. When this happens twice in the same book, along with some tales of child abuse, a high-level cover-up, a sabotage attempt on a train in which virtually everyone is killed in the carnage except the persons targeted, a suicide, plus some assorted couplings outside of the marshalling yards, things get really interesting. What makes people commit such crimes? Here Zola really shows his skill in explaining his characters' motives and the dark, primeval forces that drive them. A pulsating, chilling story from beginning to end, full of unexpected twists, starting with the creation of a previously unknown member of the Macquart family as the novel's main character. Highly recommended for long train or air journeys.

Zola is my favorite author and this is a wonderful selection of his short stories. Recently translated by Douglas Parmee, these stories were originally published between 1864 and 1899, spanning most of Zola's writing career. Arranged chronologically. you can see the author's style develop as you move from one story to the next. A great introduction to Zola's writings! The stories: The Girl Who Loves Me - A great description of a carnival sideshow's effects on a lonely young man. Rentafoil - An amusing satire on society's attempts to package and sell beauty. Story of a Madman - A woman and her lover plot to put her husband in an asylum. Big Michu - Boarding school students organize a hunger strike and a simple peasant's son takes the blame. The Attack on the Mill - The German Army occupies a French village and a young woman is forced to decide between the lives of her father and her lover - a wonderful love story. Captain Burle - A French officer embezzles funds to support his mistresses. The Way People Die - A series of brief tales showing death in different social settings. Coqueville on a Spree - Two feuding families in a small town resolve their differences in a most unusual way. A Flash in the Pan - Love between the classes is thwarted when a peasant girl falls in love with the son of a well-to-do lawyer, but her jealous father gets in the way. Dead Men Tell No Tales - A dead man tells his tale. Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre - A young woman has an affair while her aging husband gobbles shellfish to increase his virility. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder - An exiled revolutionary given up for dead returns to France searching for his wife and daughter. Priests and Sinners - Like The Way People Die, this is a series of short sketches; this time dealing with the relationship between priests and people who are thought of as sinners. Fair Exchange - An excellent portrayal of the evolving power relationships in the long-term intimate relationship between a husband and wife. The Haunted House - A haunting story about how rumor can color our perception of reality for the worse. Seven pages of Explanatory Notes by the Translator, are very helpful in bringing these tales to the modern English reader.

People may wonder nowadays whatever led to the temperance movement and the prohibition experiment. Look no further than this book. It catapulted Zola to stardom and so impressed the public that, after moving pictures were invented in 1895, three film versions of the story were made before the First World War, and even Hollywood borrowed the basic plot for "The Lost Weekend" in 1945. Don't think it just describes French society. Next time you drop into your favourite bar, look around you and imagine where your fellow customers will be in twenty years time. Then go out and buy some liquor stocks, because people never learn, so why not get your hands on some of those booze profits. If you only read one French novel in your life, read this one. You'll never be the same again.

This is a wonderful book about a very difficult era in France. It talks about the problems of everyday life, the pains and betrayals in love, and it also explores human nature. It's a great book, and I sincerely recommend anyone who speaks french to read it. I can guarantee that you will not regret it! Thanks again to my great french instructor Mme Lavocat-Dubuis for helping me understand this story and making me appreciate it!!

Emile Zola is primarily known for his novels. Only one English language collection of Zola's short stories has been available prior to the publication of FOR A NIGHT OF LOVE. Ths is a set of 16 stories published by Oxford University Press under the title The Attack On The Mill And Other Stories.

This current collection brings together three stories that the editors claim have never before been published in English. All three have a romantic theme.

The first, For A Night Of Love, tells the story of a shy young postal worker who falls in love with his beautiful, rich, and haughty neighbor. She ignores him until one night when she needs his help. The story tells how far he will go for a night of love.

The second tale is of a young man, Nantas, who comes to Paris to make his fortune and falls in love with his landlord's daughter. She needs a favor from him, but disdains his love. He goes to extraordinary lengths to win her love, but will he succeed?

These two stories of male desire are followed by Fasting, a story in which Zola takes one of his pokes at the Catholic clergy. It portrays a rich woman's sexual daydreams as she sits in church listening to a sermon on fasting given by a gourmet priest .

All three stories are excellent at portraying 19th Century France and the people of this time. It is our good fortune that these three are now available in the English language. The Foreward gives some insight into Zola's writings and the Introduction some background on the stories. A good collection of stories from one of France's greatest writiers.

Hi, first, you have to know that I have read the book in french so I got the direct style from Emile Zola. I've noticed that there's nothing about the Masterpiece by Zola. It's a story of a painter, who is creating one of the new styles of the 19th, and his difficulties with other painters. It's the explicit subject, but this book is mostly about the passion some artists have in life, and some others who've accepted the rules of society. You will experiment in this book the delight of creation but also the destruction of the human in creation. If you're interested in impressionism you should read this book, the historic point of view will interest you a lot since the writer has been a witness of great french painters, but if u get the message of this book, which is the essence of life, u'll really have a wonderful moment reading it.
Sorry for my bad english.
Sincerely,
GaFIR777
(Hope you'll read it Oracle242)

One of Zola's best and most famous works. There is something strangely fascinating about a murder where the killer escapes detection and punishment only to receive terminal treatment from another, totally unexpected source. When this happens twice in the same book, along with some tales of child abuse, a high-level cover-up, a sabotage attempt on a train in which virtually everyone is killed in the carnage except the persons targeted, a suicide, plus some assorted couplings outside of the marshalling yards, things get really interesting. What makes people commit such crimes? Here Zola really shows his skill in explaining his characters' motives and the dark, primeval forces that drive them. A pulsating, chilling story from beginning to end, full of unexpected twists, starting with the creation of a previously unknown member of the Macquart family as the novel's main character. Highly recommended for long train or air journeys.

Written in 1891, Émile Zola's classic The Debacle, provides a ground level interpretation of what it is like see one's homeland suffer military defeat, foreign occupation and internal revolution. The Debacle covers the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 from the French viewpoint. Indeed, Zola's novel is strikingly divergent from most late-19th Century European views of warfare, which saw conflict through the prism of personal glory and national aggrandizement. This is an exceedingly grim novel, without the slightest glimmer of hope for any of the characters. Zola depicts war in all its brutal fury, including battle, arson, murder, looting, children abandoned, treachery, and starvation. Indeed, the four horsemen of the apocalypse always seem close at hand in The Debacle, and usually preceded by large doses of despair and anguish.

The Debacle consists of three sections: "the trap," which covers the frontier battles between 6-30 August 1879; "the disaster," which covers the Battle of Sedan on 1-2 September 1870; and "the aftermath," which covers the period September 1870 - May 1871. Only inadequate maps and a tendency to overuse British colloquial expressions mar the Penguin edition of Zola's classic.

The main military characters in the novel are part of a company in the 106th Infantry Regiment/2nd Division/7th Corps in Alsace. Jean represents "the reasonable, solid, peasant part" of France, while Maurice represents "the silly, crazy part which had been spoilt by the Empire, unhinged by dreams and debauches." Most of the enlisted troops are presented as mercurial - brave, hard working and stoic one moment, or lazy, undisciplined and complaining the next. Certainly Zola sees the poor discipline of French troops, who discard weapons and equipment on marches, as evidence that the French Army had declined in quality from the legendary Grande Armée. The reputation of the French army of 1870 was based on a legend that it could no longer live up to, and this army marched to Sedan, "like a herd of cattle lashed by the whip of fate."

French officers, particularly at the company level were actually quite good, most of whom had risen through the ranks. Zola depicts Lieutenant Rochas, a stalwart veteran of 27 years, as typical of "the legendary French trooper going through the world between his girl on one side and a bottle of good wine on the other, conquering the world singing ribald choruses." French officers are depicted as ignorant but brave, fed on the legends of Napoleonic military invincibility. As the Battle of Sedan enters its final moments, Rochas stands, "flabbergasted and wild-eyed, having understood nothing so far about the campaign, he felt himself being enveloped and carried away by some superior force he could not resist anymore, even though he went on with his obstinate cry - Courage lads, victory is just around the corner." Even Captain Beaudoin, a bit of a fop, is able to display stoic bravery as his leg is amputated. Colonel de Vineuil, the regimental commander, is brave and imperturbable but little else. Higher level commanders are portrayed as more interested in their own comfort and careers than the welfare of the troops or the nation.

There is certainly no glory in Zola's depiction of war. The battle for Bazeilles is particularly grim, and Zola has a knack for phrases like, "destruction was now completing its work, and nothing was left but a charnel house of scattered limbs and smoking ruins." It was also unusual for a 19th Century war novel to depict what happened to casualties and Major Bouroche's aid station in Sedan is painted in the starkest, bloodstained terms. Most conventional histories of the war shift to the Siege of Paris after the surrender at Sedan, failing to note what happened to the 80,000 French prisoners of war. Zola gives the reader a vivid depiction of the suffering of these troops who were crammed into a small, disease-infested area, with no food for over a week.

Zola sees the debacle as a crime - "the murder of a nation." - with Emperor Napoleon III merely awaiting fate. Who was responsible for the crime? Through the civilian Delaherche, the capitalist, Zola points to opposition politicians in the legislature for failing to provide enough funds for military preparedness. At the grunt level, the troops blame their division and corps commanders - "the whole absence of any plan or energetic leadership were precipitating the disaster." Zola also points to the collapse of the French logistic system early in the war, which left troops unfed and short of ammunition, as attributable to shoddy staff work and a spastic command and control system. After the first defeats on the frontier, pessimism rapidly replaces blind optimism in the French ranks and a sense of the inevitability of defeat develops. Maurice concludes that, "we were bound to be beaten on account of causes the inevitable results of which were plain for all to see, the collision of unintelligent bravery with superior numbers and cool method."

Are there lessons for modern readers in Zola's 112-year old novel? Certainly an obvious point that Zola hammers home through his characters is that national security should be based on realistic assessments of one's own strengths and weaknesses, and not based merely on past reputations. While the French military was given the physical tools for modern war - the chassepot rifle and the mitrailleuse - the upper leadership did not possess the intellectual or emotional stamina for modern warfare. Zola also makes points about the nuts and bolts of foreign military occupation and military government that are just as relevant today in Baghdad as they were in Sedan. Finally, while Zola waffles on whether or not war is a "necessary evil," he certainly makes the point that given its inherently high cost in human suffering that it should only be embarked upon for reasons of national survival, and not merely to satisfy the whims of an opportunistic politician.

War has served as the back drop of many literary masterpieces: The Illiad, War and Peace, The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22. Zola's "La Debacle," set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, is every bit as good as these classics. Yet, somehow, this piece seems to have been dropped from the list of war novel classics.

Zola spent 20 years researching the conflict in great detail and his novel is as faithful to historical fact as any ever written. Few military defeats have been as sudden, unanticipated, complete and humiliating as the French collapse in 1870. Zola captures the demoralizing effect that the vertiginous orders and counter-orders had on the French troops in the early phases of the war. A complete lack of planning and mobilization plans, along with inefficient communications and intelligence services, led to scattered units marching aimlessly in search of the enemy without food or shelter and without any general plan of operations. The French were truly defeated before ever making contact with the Prussians. La Debacle is as a good an illustration of the "fog of war" as any I've read.

French novelist and critic, the founder of naturalist movement in literature. As a political journalist Zola did not hide his antipathy toward the French Emperor Napoleon II and his Second Empire, his works in which Zola scandalised the drawing rooms of the day with detailed exposures of the vast exploitation underpinning the glitter of France.

Zola Make John a 25 years old, brilliant, smooth talking investment banker discovers that his life is not as wonderful as it seemed. He is framed into an illegal enterprise by his vicious ex-girlfriend. Problems begin to appear very quickly and friends turn away almost instantly. John finds that his paradise turned into a debacle. Yet, there is a happy end to this crazy adventure. Zola keeps the reader in suspense, every next page hides some surprise, and there is a lot of great humor too! For the action-lovers it is a MUST!!!

"The Ladies Paradise" or "Au Bonheur des Dames" is the continuation of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. The series' purpose, according to Zola, is to study how environment effects the character of one family line. Three "environments" have appeared in Zola's work: the first is the idyllic countryside, the second is the harsh countryside, and the third is Paris--the city. "Au Bonheur des Dames" is situated in the third of the "environments", Paris.

From his previous works, Paris is already known for its potential as a corruptionist of morality and goodness. Thus, the heroine already is facing an insurmountable task of remaining adverse to Paris' degradation of moral values. She is the ultimate martyr: her sacrifices to her younger brothers seem endless. She scrapes money together to have the youngest in a boarding house for children, and always manage to find money (even in desperate times)to give to the other spendthrift brother. All of these sacrifices she did out of love.

With such heart and of such noble spirit, she enters Paris. She is struck by the first sight she sees in Paris. A gigantic structure has swallowed an entire block of old and fading smaller stores. She is astounded, awed, and fascinated by it. Her loyalty is divided between her Uncle's small clothier and her fascination and desire to work in the store.

"Au Bonheur des Dames" has two stories: (1) the spread of the popularity of department stores and the death of smaller family owned stores in "modern" Paris, and (2) the noble heroine. Will the heroine be crushed by Paris and swallowed up by the department store? Will her nobler spirit defeat all the odds that have been predestined to be against her?

The most surprising event I find was that I did not have to answer with pessimism about "Au Bonheur des Dames". The usual gloom and sense of helplessness and resignation of being human did not reverberate in this novel. Yes, the department thrives and therefore consumed all the "moms and pops" stores along its path, but our heroine conquers that depraved city Paris with her courage, innocence, and nobility.

What a truly remarkable book, as all of Zola's magnificent work. I find this book different from any of the series, because there is more than a sense of hope for humanity in our struggle against corruption, against technological advancement, and our own weakness of spirit.

The rise of department store culture in late 19th century Paris is the subject of this wonderful novel. It's quintessential Zola, in that the book is a top-notch combination of realistic writing and soap opera. Like other classics by Zola - "L'Assomoir," "Germinal" - "The Ladies Paradise" uses a somewhat overheated storyline to comment on social change and how a rapacious capitalism changed the lives of everyone it touched. The novel is especially poignant in its depiction of small, family-owned businesses which are eventually destroyed by the kind of modern marketing techniques that created the department store. A real page-turner, "The Ladies Paradise" works as both exceptional trash novel and social critique. Zola is a real genius and this, one of his more obscure works, is also one of his best.

With his Rougon-Macquart series, Emile Zola established the family saga. He put into naturalistic prose and photographic narrative the tales of a family and how their lives are affected by their surroundings. In L'Assomoir, he focused on the lives of the Provencals, those who live in the French countryside, whose lives may appear peaceful and orderly but might not be at a closer look. In Nana, he wrote about the world of the courtesan or high class prostitute operating in the beauty and sex-obscessed French culture of Paris. In "Au Bonheur Des Dames" (The Lady's Paradise) Zola exposes the capitalism and consumer culture of fashion, as expressed in the sales at the department stores.

It was the time of Karl Marx, a time when conservative elements came into conflict with those of individual expression and equal rights. Previously, Emile Zola's novels were bleak, Dickensian and depressing, making a cynical social commentary that progress and idealism is stifled under staunch older generations of Republican power (in this case the French Second Empire under Louis Napoleon III). He conveyed so much pain and suffering in "Germinal" about the coal mine workers in rural France. Like John Steinbeck of the 19th century, Emile Zola immersed himself in what he wrote, treating people as humanly real as possible, touching a chord to so many for his unabashed truths.

In The Ladies Paradise (the title refers to the name of the high class department store in downtown Paris), Zola portrays the fetish and profitable business of women's fashion. Octave Mouret, who at fist comes off as a money-loving, greedy, corporate seducer learns the value of progress and the rights of the individual. Where as he had always dominated women, manipulating them to buy his endless carrousel of hats, silks, gowns and shoes, he cannot win the affections of the newcomer sales girls Denise.

Denis eyes become our eyes as we see into the sexist world of consumer capitalism. Even today, this holds true. Women are encouraged, enforced and expected to be beautiful and attractive, with 0 size dresses, with fashionable tastes and so forth. Those who cannot meet society's self-imposed ideals of beauty crack under the pressure, becoming anorexic, anxious and sick. Super models, department stores, fashion magazines and the latest trends to look like Britney Spears (and behave just as shallow and air-headed) is the way to happiness they say. Emile Zola completely transports you to Paris of the 1870's and 1880's a time when the world seemed to be losing its better values. Is it still losing its values ? Only through advocating women's rights, individual expression, equality, and less stifling elements in society are we truly to be happy.