La Terre (The Earth) by Émile Zola

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La Terre describes the steady disintegration of a family of agricultural workers in Second Empire France, in the years immediately before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It offers a vivid description of the hardships and brutality of rural life in the late nineteenth century. Zola's classic story of an old man who, forced to divide his property among his children, is cruelly harassed by them for what little else remains. The theme, as simple yet as complex as the earth itself, hums with the intrigue of subplots carefully dovetailed into the narrative and constantly arrests the reader with fascinating insights into the motivations of the characters. Zola's novel is one of the most graphically violent and, to a lesser extent, sexually explicit novels of the nineteenth century, and caused considerable controversy at the time of its publication. In it, Zola's efforts to expose the unpleasant underside of his contemporary society reached its apogee; none of the other Rougon-Macquart novels features such sensational material. The publication of an English translation of La Terre in 1888 led to the prosecution for obscenity of the publisher, Henry Vizetelly.