All Formats & Editions

b 'in this life, even if you don't ask for much you still end up with bugger all ' /b

A son arriv e Paris, Gervaise Macquart est vite abandonn e par son amant Lantier. Elle reprend alors son travail de blanchisseuse et pouse par d pit Coupeau qui, convalescent, commence boire... Le septi me volume de la s rie des Rougon-Macquart d' mile Zola o se m lent... Read Full Overview

Previously published as L'assommoir (The Dram Shop), Emile Zola's The Drinking Den is an unflinching study of a desperate young woman struggling against the ravages of vice. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the French with an introduction... Read Full Overview

The seventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, L'Assommoir (1877) is the story of a woman's struggle for happiness in working-class Paris. At the center of the story stands Gervaise, who starts her own laundry and for a time makes a success of it. But her husband soon squanders... Read Full Overview

The seventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, L'Assommoir (1877) is the story of a woman's struggle for happiness in working-class Paris. At the center of the story stands Gervaise, who starts her own laundry and for a time makes a success of it. But her husband soon squanders... Read Full Overview

Focuses on the Paris taverns, presenting a tragedy of working-class people in slums. The work was influenced by theories of heredity/experimental science. The behaviour of the families is shown to be conditioned by environment/inherited characteristics, chiefly drunkenness and... Read Full Overview

At the centre of the novel stands Gervaise, who starts her own laundry and for a time makes a success of it. But her husband Coupeau squanders her earnings in the Assommoir, the local drinking shop, and gradually the pair sink into poverty and squalor.

Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then, shivering from having remained in a thin loose jacket, exposed to the fresh air at the window, she had thrown herself across the bed, drowsy, feverish, and her cheeks bathed in tears. For a week past, on leaving... Read Full Overview

La taberna apareci por vez primera en 1877 y constituy el primer gran xito Zola y una importante inyecci n econ mica. El autor se convirti en una celebridad literaria y a su alrededor se agruparon una serie de escritores que se dec an disc pulos suyos. Definida por el propio... Read Full Overview

Les Rougon-Macquart doivent se composer d'une vingtaine de romans. Depuis 1869, le plan g n ral est arr t , et je le suis avec une rigueur extr me. L'Assommoir est venu son heure, je l'ai crit, comme j' crirai les autres, sans me d ranger une seconde de ma ligne droite. C'est... Read Full Overview