Zola, ?mile

The story of ruthless protagonist Nana's rise from the gutter to the height of Parisian society. The book opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption.

Jean Macquart, a working class, middle-aged soldier in the French Army, is forced to overcome his dislike for wealthy Maurice Levasseur when the two men are thrown together during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and they soon forge a deep friendship that takes them through the destruction of France's Second Empire.