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Germinie Lacerteux

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About this book

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.

About the author

Edmond de Goncourt, Jules de Goncourt

Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt were French brothers who wrote as a single author, producing novels, art criticism, and a famous journal of Parisian literary life. Pioneers of naturalism, they gave their name to the Prix Goncourt, France's leading literary award, endowed by Edmond.

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