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.

左拉(1840～1902)

法国著名小说家、评论家和自然主义文学的主要倡导者，一生著有数十部长篇小说，代表作《三名城》、《四福音书》、《小酒店》、《金钱》、《娜娜》、《萌芽》等。其中《小酒店》、《娜娜》、《妇女乐园》、《萌芽》、《金钱》、《崩溃》等堪称现实主义的优秀作品。