{"product_id":"the-assommoir-the-drinking-den-liam-ferousse-9798302275295","title":"The Assommoir (The Drinking Den): A New Translation","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShe wanted so little. A clean laundry shop. Honest work. A roof over her children's heads. Respectability.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGervaise Macquart arrives in Paris abandoned and pregnant, but she refuses to surrender to poverty's undertow. Through sheer will, she builds what she's dreamed of-her own laundry, a wedding, a home. For a few precious years, she almost escapes. The white-hot iron hisses over fine linen. Customers pay on time. Her children eat every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the assommoir claims her husband. That dingy drinking establishment on the corner, its cheap liquor turning workers into shambling wrecks, reaches out with patient cruelty. Coupeau's descent into alcoholism becomes Gervaise's descent into hell. Bills mount. The laundry fails. Hunger returns. And Gervaise herself, who swore she'd never touch the stuff, discovers that poverty and despair have their own terrible thirst.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eÉmile Zola's 1877 masterpiece shocked France with its unflinching portrait of working-class Paris\u003c\/b\u003e. Written in the crude argot of the streets-language no \"serious\" literature had dared use-\u003ci\u003eThe Assommoir\u003c\/i\u003e became both scandalous bestseller and social revelation. Critics condemned it as obscene, filthy, an insult to French workers. Workers themselves recognized in Gervaise's tragedy their own impossible struggle against forces-economic, social, chemical-designed to crush them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eZola spent months researching laundries, tenements, and drinking establishments in working-class Paris. He documented wages, rents, alcohol consumption, the exact mechanics of poverty's grinding machinery. But he created more than documentary-he created Gervaise, one of literature's most fully human characters, whose dreams and defeats embody the brutal cost of inequality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe seventh volume of the Rougon-Macquart cycle-where Zola transforms social analysis into tragedy and working-class life into unforgettable art.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStill devastating. Still essential.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Liam Ferousse,Émile Zola\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798302275295\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/03\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 392\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.04lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.97d","brand":"Liam Ferousse","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48997110087935,"sku":"9798302275295","price":16.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-assommoir-the-drinking-den-liam-ferousse-9798302275295","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}