La Joie de vivre

Emile Zola

The Joy of Life is the twelfth volume in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle. It follows Pauline Quenu, an orphan taken in by the Chanteau family in Bonneville on the Normandy coast. Alongside Lazare, a young man beset by doubt and changing projects, she encounters a fragile family. Zola sets the will to live against anxieties about illness, death, and money, within a powerful seascape.