Les Rougon-Macquart

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Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to French novelist Emile Zola's greatest literary achievement, a monumental twenty-novel cycle about the exploits of various members of an extended family during the French Second Empire, from the coup d'état of December 1851 which established Napoleon III as Emperor through to the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 which brought the Empire down.

The novels in the cycle, in order of publication in the original French, are as follows:

1. La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
2. La Curée (1871-2)
3. Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
4. La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
5. La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
6. Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
7. L'Assommoir (1877)
8. Une Page d'amour (1878)
9. Nana (1880)
10. Pot-Bouille (1882)
11. Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
12. La Joie de vivre (1884)
13. Germinal (1885)
14. L'Œuvre (1886)
15. La Terre (1887)
16. Le Rêve (1888)
17. La Bête humaine (1890)
18. L'Argent (1891)
19. La Débâcle (1892)
20. Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

Almost all of the main protagonists for each novel are introduced in the first book, La Fortune des Rougon. The last novel in the cycle, Le Docteur Pascal, contains a lengthy chapter tying up virtually all the loose ends from the other novels. In between, there is no "best sequence" in which to read the novels in the cycle, as they are not in chronological order and indeed are impossible to arrange into such an order. Although some of the novels in the cycle are direct sequels to one another, many of them follow on directly from the last chapters of La Fortune des Rougon, and there is a great deal of chronological overlap between the books; there are numerous recurring characters and several of them make "guest" appearances in novels centred on other members of the family.

All 20 of the novels have been translated into English under various titles (details of which are listed under each novel's individual entry), but some of the translations are out of print or badly outdated and censored. Excellent modern English translations are widely available for nine of the most popular novels in the cycle and more are being commissioned all the time.

 

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