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The Debacle
Original price was: $14.65.$10.99Current price is: $10.99.
Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the pair are compelled to understand one other. Forging a profound friendship, they must struggle together to endure a disorganised and brutal war, the savage destruction of France’s Second Empire and the fall of Napoleon III. One of the greatest of all war novels, The Debacle is the nineteenth novel in Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A forceful and deeply moving tale of close friendship, it is also a fascinating chronicle of the events that were to lead, in the words of Zola himself, to ‘the murder of a nation’.
| About Author | Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.More than half o |
|---|---|
| Author | Emile Zola |
| Book Series | Les Rougon-Macquart |
| Format | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780141961040 |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 505 |
| Publication Date | 03-29-2006 |
| Publisher | Penguin |
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Jon_B (verified owner) –
Zola’s novel of the Franco-Prussian war is as much about friendship as it is about the war. When he focuses on the nature of the friendship between Jean and Maurice, the book is somewhat touching, a bit over-sentimental, and often rather melancholy. When he focuses on the horrors of war and the effect of this conflict on the towns, villages, and families of Sedan and the surrounding area, the book is powerful, gruesome – often with a lot of graphic detail, depressing, but ultimately enlightening. His skill at portraying both the political/intellectual and emotional states of the French people during this now-forgotten time is readily apparent.My only criticism is that substantial portions of the book are taken up with rather dry descriptions of complex troop movements. Zola will periodically leave his characters behind and launch into one of these overviews in such detail that you’ll need to have some good maps of north-eastern France and an encyclopedia explaining the histories of various French and Prussian generals for these segments to make any sense. Zola was writing for an audience for whom such things were relatively common knowledge – but to a modern American the names of the relevant towns and villages and most of the generals were completely unfamiliar, and Zola doesn’t really bother with trying to introduce the reader to any of them, he just assumes you know what he’s talking about. Luckily there are a lot of great free resources online to help with these things.Overall, this is a great book, though it can certainly get you down, and you’ll want to have – at the very least, Google maps and Wikipedia nearby because you’ll probably be looking up an awful lot of references!