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Trade Paperback. Condition: Very Good. First Printing. 287 Pages. No defects noted to this very clean book with flawless interior text pages. In this book Florent Quenu is unjustly deported to Devil's Island following Louis-Napoleon's coup-d'etat in December 1851. He escapes and returns to Paris. He finds the city changed beyond recognition. The old Marche des Innocents has been knocked down as part of Haussmann's grand program of urban reconstruction to make way for Les Halles, the spectacular new food markets. Disgusted by a bourgeois society whose devotion to food is inseparable from its devotion to the Government, Florent attempts an insurrection. Les Halles, apocalyptic and destructive, play an active role in Emile Zola's picture of a world in which food and the injustice of society are inextricably linked. This book is the third of hxis famous series of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart. It introduces the painter Claude Lantier and in its satirical representation of the bourgeoisie and capitalism complements Zola's other great novels of social conflict and urban poverty. Emile Zola was born in Paris in 1840, the son of a Venetian engineer. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence and after an undistinguished school career and a brief period of dire poverty in Paris, Zola joined the newly founded publishing firm of Hachette which he left in 1866 to live by his pen. He had already published a novel and his first collection of short stories. Other novels and stories followed until in 1871 Zola published the first volume of his Rougon-Macquart series, in which he illustrates the influence of heredity and environment on a wide range of characters. It was not until 1877 that his novel L 'Assommoir, a study of alcoholism in the working classes, brought him wealth and fame. The last of the Rougon-Macquart series appeared in 1893.