Germinal
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Paperback Oxford Worlds Classics English
By (author) Emile Zola , Translated by Peter Collier , Introduction by Robert Lethbridge


Categories: Literary Studies: C 1800 To C 1900 Literary Studies: Fiction, Novelists & Prose Writers Contemporary Fiction Classic Books & Novels


Zolas masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zolas death in 1902 it had come to symbolise the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted Germinal! Germinal!.
The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow-miners in a strike protesting against pay-cuts - a strike which becomes a losing battle against starvation, repression, and sabotage. Yet despite all the violence and disillusion which rock the mining community to its foundations, Lantier retains his belief in the ultimate germination of a new society, leading to a better world.
Germinal is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, but it is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigour and power in this new translation.
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Product details

Format Paperback | 576 pages
Dimensions 129 x 197 x 25mm | 398g
Publication date 01 Sep 2008
Publisher Oxford University Press
Publication City/Country Oxford, United Kingdom
Language English
Edition Statement Reissue
Illustrations note 1 map
ISBN10 0199536899
ISBN13 9780199536894
Bestsellers rank 67,404