Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman
conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death
in 1902 it had come to symbolise the call for freedom from oppression so
forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted
'Germinal! Germinal!'. The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an
outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow-miners
in a strike protesting against pay-cuts - a strike which becomes a
losing battle against starvation, repression, and sabotage.
Yet
despite all the violence and disillusion which rock the mining
community to its foundations, Lantier retains his belief in the ultimate
germination of a new society, leading to a better world. Germinal is
a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, but it is
also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigour and power in this new
translation. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's
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Germinal - Emile Zola & Robert Lethbridge (Introduction By)
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