The Fortune of the Rougons: A New Translation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798303867161)

Every fortune has its origin. Every empire begins with betrayal.

December 1851. In the provincial town of Plassans, news arrives that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte has seized power in Paris. As France convulses between republic and empire, the Rougon family sees its opportunity.

Pierre Rougon and his calculating wife Félicité have spent decades in comfortable obscurity, haunted by the shame of their family origins-an unstable matriarch, illegitimate half-siblings, a legacy of madness and poverty they've worked to bury. But political crisis creates possibilities for the ruthless, and the Rougons are nothing if not opportunistic. As republican insurgents march through the countryside and government forces gather to crush them, Pierre positions himself as Plassans's savior-despite having done nothing remotely heroic.

Meanwhile, in the shadows of their scheming elders, two young lovers dare to dream of a different future. Silvère Mouret, Pierre's nephew, burns with republican idealism. Miette Chantegreil, daughter of a deported radical, shares his faith in justice and revolution. Together they meet in an abandoned cemetery-that space between death and life, past and future-planning for a world that will never come.

When the republican column marches toward Plassans, Silvère and Miette march with it, carrying the red flag and their impossible hopes. The Rougons, meanwhile, perfect their myth of courage while waiting to see which side will win. In the collision between youthful idealism and middle-aged opportunism, between republican dreams and imperial reality, fortunes will be made and lives will be extinguished.

Émile Zola's explosive opening to his twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart cycle is both intimate family drama and sweeping historical epic. With precision and passion, he dissects the birth of the Second Empire-not through grand figures and great battles, but through provincial schemers and doomed lovers, through the machinery of myth-making and the casual brutality of power. Here is the origin of everything that follows: the family crack that will manifest across generations, the regime built on opportunistic lies, the fortune made from others' deaths.

Some empires are born in glory. This one was born in blood and fabrication.

From the author of Germinal and Nana-the stunning first chapter of literature's most ambitious family saga.