Germinie Lacerteux

The Goncourt brothers based this short, unsparing novel on the secret life of their own servant, whose respectable surface hid years of squalor and ruin. Their heroine, Germinie Lacerteux, is a devoted Paris maid whose starved need for affection drags her into debt, drink, and disgrace, all of it concealed from the elderly mistress she serves. When it appeared in 1865, the book helped open French fiction to the lives of the poor, treated with clinical honesty rather than sentiment, and it became a founding text of the literary naturalism that Zola would soon carry further. It is bleak, compassionate, and closely observed. This edition presents John Chestershire’s English translation. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.