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The Downfall

by Émile Zola

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First published: 1892
Pages: 530

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About this book

Zola's great war novel follows the French army's collapse during the Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870, seen mainly through Jean Macquart, a peasant turned soldier, and his volatile friend Maurice. Marching, retreating, and finally trapped in the catastrophe at Sedan, they endure hunger, confusion, and slaughter as the Second Empire falls apart around them. The story closes amid the flames of the Paris Commune, with the two comrades on opposite sides. Zola spares nothing in showing how ordinary men are ground up by military incompetence and national pride, yet ends on a bruised note of hope for a country forced to rebuild. It stands as one of the strongest antiwar works of its century.

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.