L'Assommoir

Emile Zola

Émile Zola’s naturalist novel follows Gervaise Macquart, a laundress who dreams of a secure home and honest work in a working-class district of Paris. Poverty, exploitation, and her husband Coupeau’s alcoholism gradually destroy the family. Part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the novel offers an uncompromising portrait of social conditions in the nineteenth century.