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The Debacle

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Debacle
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Emile Zola
Introduction by Leonard Tancock
Translated by Leonard Tancock
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:512
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreClassic fiction (pre c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9780140442809
ClassificationsDewey:843.8 843.8
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 30 March 2006
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Robin Buss's acclaimed translation vividly brings Zola's descriptions to life in clear, contemporary English. Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the pair are compelled to understand one other. Forging a profound friendship, they must struggle together to endure a disorganised and brutal war, the savage destruction of France's Second Empire and the fall of Napoleon III. One of the greatest of all war novels, The Debacle is the nineteenth novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A forceful and deeply moving tale of close friendship, it is also a fascinating chronicle of the events that were to lead, in the words of Zola himself, to 'the murder of a nation'.

Author Biography

Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist and critic, the founder of the Naturalist movement in literature. Among Zola's most important works is his famous Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893), which included such novels as L'Assomoir (1877), about the suffering of the Parisian working-class, Nana (1880), dealing with prostitution, and Germinal (1885).