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The Conquest of Plassans

by Émile Zola

First published: 1874
Pages: 348

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About this book

When the brooding Abbé Faujas and his mother take lodgings with the comfortable Mouret family, the household's quiet routine slowly comes apart. Sent to bring the provincial town back under Imperial control, Faujas works through drawing rooms and confessionals, bending clergy, gossips, and rival factions to his purpose. Marthe Mouret drifts into feverish devotion while her husband François sinks toward ruin and madness, his own home no longer his own. Zola studies religion as an instrument of political conquest and the corrosive effect of one cold ambition on ordinary lives, building to a shattering, fiery close. Part of the Rougon-Macquart series, it ranks among his most unsettling domestic dramas. Read it free as a PDF and EPUB edition.

About the author

Émile Zola

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist and the leading figure of literary naturalism. His twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle traced one family under the Second Empire, and his open letter J'accuse in defense of Alfred Dreyfus reshaped the writer's role in public life.