Career of the Rougons

Emile Zola (1840–1902) is one of the pillars of world realistic literature, the leader of the literary movement of naturalism, a passionate publicist and human rights activist, and a passionate researcher of everyday life. His most famous work is the epoch-making twenty-volume cycle "Rougon-Macquart", opening up to the reader an endless panorama of human vices and virtues in the scenery of the Second Empire, an encyclopedia of the life of Paris and the French province based on several generations of one family, which gave birth to the strangest fruits in its first novel " The Career of the Rougons" (1871), written on the eve of the war with Prussia and the Paris Commune, the author contrasts the young idealists Silver and his friend Miette with their revolutionary passion, purity of impulse, and those who strive for power. These people are only concerned with how to “sell themselves as dearly as possible”; they are ready to go over to the side of those who will generously reward them in the hour of triumph.