BookLens — See inside before you read

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What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

Violence

A lot

Strike violence; soldiers shooting miners; Maigrat's murder by the women and the mutilation of his body; the mine disaster

Language

Some

Adult language; Zola's realist register

Sexual Content

Some

Adult relationships including an extramarital relationship; a scene of sexual coercion

Substance Use

Some

Heavy drinking throughout the mining community; poverty and alcohol as intertwined themes

Emotional Intensity

A lot

The psychological weight of poverty and its destruction of hope; violence and revenge cycles; the tragedy of the ending

What this book is about

Étienne Lantier, a young worker, arrives at the Voreux coal mine in northern France and finds miners living in grinding poverty. He organizes a strike, and what follows is one of literature's most powerful accounts of class warfare: the strikers' hope, the mine owner's contempt, the brutality of the army, and finally the catastrophe of the flooded mine. Zola's masterpiece from the Rougon-Macquart cycle is terrifying in its accuracy and compassion—one of the great social novels of any century.