1880

According to Wikipedia: "Emile Zola (2 April 1840 - 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France...After his first major novel, Therese Raquin (1867), Zola started the long series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire... More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career re synthetized his work into La Comedie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution."

A poignant tale in which Zola highlights the futility of war and the destruction it causes. The happiness and peace of the protagonists is wrecked when Prussian soldiers enter their village. Zola has excelled himself in the in-depth portrayal of human emotions and feelings. Intensely moving!

Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was the perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana—the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L'Assommoir—is now rendered in racy, stylish English.