The Fat and the Thin

Émile ZolaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.4

Word count: 772K words
Chapters: 78

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Fat and the Thin by Émile ZolaAuthor: Zola, Émile, 1840-1902,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 22, 2006

Editor's review

The Fat and the Thin is one of the novels in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series. Set against the backdrop of the central Paris food market, it juxtaposes characters from two social strata to reveal the material desires and struggle for survival of urban life in the Second Empire. Zola's naturalist method is especially concentrated here: the abundance and scarcity of food, the plumpness and thinness of bodies, are all invested with social metaphor. Readers can see how the author records the market, the neighborhood, and the details of food and eating in a manner close to fieldwork, and then weaves these details into his characters' fates. For readers interested in nineteenth-century French social fiction, naturalist literary method, or urban space and class, this work offers a solid textual entry point. The English translation is issued by Project Gutenberg and is suitable for electronic reading and as course support material.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary enthusiasts who want to read Zola's series systematically
Students studying naturalist literature and nineteenth-century French society
Readers interested in writing about urban markets, food, and class
Teachers and researchers who need public-domain English electronic texts

Not a good fit for

Casual readers who prefer light plotting and fast-paced narrative
Readers impatient with long social description and elaborate detail

Reading tips

Read the series background first, then enter this book, to better understand the character relationships
Pay attention to the market and food descriptions, and read them as metaphors for social structure
Read alongside other novels in Zola's series to observe the continuation of themes

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Which novel in Zola's series is this?

It is one of the novels in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series, with the central Paris food market as an important setting. Read it within the series as a whole, attending to the naturalist method and the presentation of Second Empire social background.

Is the English edition suitable for non-native readers?

The English translation provided by Project Gutenberg is a public-domain electronic text. The language is generally readable, but it involves extensive descriptions of markets, food, and class, with high lexical density. Non-native readers may first learn the story background, then read in sections, using notes and a dictionary as needed.

Do I need to know French history before reading?

Not in depth, but understanding the social stratification and urban development of nineteenth-century France during the Second Empire will make it easier to grasp the symbolic meaning of the market space and the characters' situations. A brief introduction to the period's background before entering the text is advisable.

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About the author

Émile Zola Author · French · 1840–1902

Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, critic and political activist, one of the most prominent French writers of the late nineteenth century and the founder of the theory of naturalism. Through his twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart he constructed a vast social panorama, with representative works including Germinal, L'Assommoir, Au Bonheur des Dames and La Bête humaine. These works often take workers, peasants and ordinary city people as their protagonists, presenting poverty, labour and desire with meticulous observation and an almost documentary style, calm yet powerful. During the Dreyfus Affair Zola published the famous open letter J'Accuse, intervening in public affairs as an intellectual in the cause of justice. The library holds 93 of his works, including several translations.