Emile Zola

The novel is set in Paris in the years immediately preceding the fall of Napoleon III’s empire. Nana is an eighteen-year-old girl endowed with a peculiar charm that stems, far more than from beauty itself, from her sensuality, youthfulness, and demeanor. From the outset, Zola presents her as a goddess, a deity of vulgarity and scandal. > Nana, very tall, very robust for her eighteen years (in

These are two naturalist novels of a pronounced sociological stamp: almost social inquiries. In *La Terre*, Zola depicts, ruthlessly and without the slightest concession to idealism or optimism, the economic and social reality of French agriculture at the close of the nineteenth century. Nothing is spared; in particular, the family and human relationships are shattered by the greed for property