This image is the cover for the book Germinal, Les Rougon-Macquart

Germinal, Les Rougon-Macquart

The political awakening of a migrant worker in northern France leads to a coal-mining strike in this masterpiece of nineteenth-century French literature.

Former railway worker Étienne Lantier has come to the bleak town of Montsou in search of work. Befriending a coal miner, he soon takes a job pushing carts into the Voreux mine. Though he finds a place of respect among his fellow workers, Lantier begins to see how unacceptable their life of poverty, illness, and hunger truly is. As his political idealism takes shape, he inspires a strike that will bring both suffering and hope to Montsou.

First published in 1885, Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s celebrated Les Rougon-Macquart sequence. It combines an uncompromising depiction of working conditions in northern France with an inspiring evocation of love, community, and the human spirit.

Émile Zola, Havelock Ellis

Émile Zola was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France. 

Open Road Integrated Media