Zola

The impact of Emile Zola is much wider than French literature; he was the pioneer in the history of realism and socialism. Zola: A Life In Naturalism is an entertaining study of the author who transformed the novel into a strict, scientific investigation into the mechanism of human life.

H.H. Soltan painstakingly recreates the socio-political atmosphere in France during the 19th century, the period of industrial revolution and the extreme stratification of classes, to demonstrate how the so-called experimental technique of Zola was born. The book discusses the influences that Zola had as a child, such as his multicultural background and his early friendship with Paul Cézanne, which led him to the principle of synthesising the scientific observation with the aesthetic innovation.

At the centre of the book is a detailed discussion of Les Rougons-Macquart, the twenty volumes of the epic in which Zola explored his themes. Soltan describes how Zola had used the concepts of heredity and environment to explain the deterministic influences on his characters. The book presents various examples of Zola's denial of sentimental treatment of the working class and the responsiveness of emotions, which is the most expressive in literature, in its coalfields of Germinal northwards and in the laundry shops of L'Assommoir.

In addition to the literary theory, this book offers a profound insight into the civic responsibility of Zola. It describes his heroic role in the Dreyfus Affair, his subsequent exile in England, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death in 1902.

Concluding with the evaluation of Zola in the film and visual narration, Soltan manages to show that the unvarnished truths of Zola are as topical now as they were a hundred years ago. The book is a vital contribution to any research or personal collection on the subject matter of European thought and the evolution of the modern novel.

Designed for libraries, universities, and serious readers, this volume combines biography, literary criticism, and cultural history. It is suitable for courses in European literature, realism, modern intellectual history, and social theory.