We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more
Request an Inspection Copy
Cover

The Fortune of the Rougons

Émile Zola
Brian Nelson

09 August 2012

ISBN: 9780199560998

336 pages
Paperback
196x129mm

In Stock

Oxford World's Classics

Price: £8.99

The Fortune of the Rougons is the first in Zola's famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels. Not only the inaugural novel, it is the series' founding text, establishing its genealogical basis. The family's greed and rapacity mirrors the diseased society in which it flourishes. This lively new translation is accompanied by introduction and notes.

Share:

Description

The Fortune of the Rougons is the first in Zola's famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels. Not only the inaugural novel, it is the series' founding text, establishing its genealogical basis. The family's greed and rapacity mirrors the diseased society in which it flourishes. This lively new translation is accompanied by introduction and notes.

  • The first novel in Zola's famous Rougon-Macquart series, The Fortune of the Rougons is the series' founding text in which the prehistory of the family's two branches is recounted, establishing the hereditary basis for the family characteristics and flaws evident in the later novels.
  • Set during the time of Louis-Napoleon's coup d'état in 1851, the exciting events establish the symbolic links between a tainted family and the diseased society of the Second Empire.
  • The first new translation since the nineteenth century.
  • The wide-ranging introduction explains the background to the Rougon-Macquart series as well as the historical setting of the novel and its special qualities.
  • Brian Nelson is the established translator of four other Zola novels in Oxford World's Classics.
  • Includes chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes.

About the Author(s)

Émile Zola

Brian Nelson, Emeritus Professor of French Studies and Translation, Monash University, Melbourne

Brian Nelson is the author or editor of twelve books on aspects of modern French and European culture, including The Cambridge Companion to Émile Zola (2007). For Oxford World's Classics he has translated Zola's The Ladies' Paradise, Pot Luck, The Kill, and The Belly of Paris.

Reviews

"Reading Brian Nelson's Introduction to The Fortune of the Rougons is a real treat." - Lisa Hill, ANZLitLovers

"The edition I read was the Oxford World's Classics translation by Brian Nelson and it's excellent ... as an introduction [to Zola] this has been such an inspiring read." - Desperate Reader

Related Titles