Money

The eighteenth novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle turns to the Paris stock exchange and the fever of speculation. Aristide Saccard, ruined and desperate to rise again, founds a bank to bankroll grand ventures across the Middle East, then inflates its shares through rumor and fraud until the whole structure sways. Zola lays out the mechanics of a financial bubble with a reporter’s precision, and he is honest about the pull of money, the way it wrecks some lives and quickens others. Around Saccard move investors, idealists, and the poor who chase the rising numbers. The crash, when it comes, spares almost no one. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.