Book description
Considered by Andr Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the
French language, Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty and
wretchedness of a mining community in northern France under the second
empire. At the centre of the novel is Etienne Lantier, a handsome 21
year-old mechanic, intelligent but with little education and a dangerous
predisposition to murderous, alcoholic rage. Germinal tells the parallel
story of Etienne's refusal to accept what he appears destined to become,
and of the miners' difficult decision to strike in order to fight for a
better standard of life.
Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of
naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a
panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels
which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years.
Roger Pearson is professor of French at the University of Oxford. He
is the author of critical works on Voltaire, Stendhal and Mallarm and
has translated Voltaire, Zola and Maupassant.
