Germinal (Everyman Paperback Classics)

 (63 customer reviews)

Germinal is generally considered the greatest of Emile Zola's twenty novel Rougon-Macquart cycle. Of these, Germinal is the most concerned with the daily life of the working poor. Set in the mid 1860's, the novel's protaganist Etienne Lantier is hungry and homeless, wandering the French countryside, looking for work. He stumbles upon village 240, the home of a coal mine, La Voreteux. He quickly gets a job in the depths of the mine, experiencing the backbreaking work of toiling hundreds of feet below the earth. He is befriended by a local family and they all lament the constant work required to earn just enough to slowly starve. Fired up by Marxist ideology, he convinces the miners to strike for a pay raise. The remainder of the novel tells the story of the strike and its effect on the workers, managers, owners and shareholders.
Zola weaves a strong plot line along with a multitude of characters. The hallmark of this novel is the wealth of people who populate the pages...Read more

Mind you, I've only read five of Zola's books (I'd be plowing through the rest now, if not for the bane of schoolwork...grrr), so it's possible that the man's written something even better, but it's hard to imagine how that would be possible, really. Germinal is such an amazing, multi-faceted piece of work that it seems difficult if not impossible to encapsulate the whole thing in a paltry review. If the concept of a novel based around a coal miners' strike in nineteenth-century France sounds off-putting to you, be assured, it's much more accessible than you think. Frequently depressing it certainly is, but it's never less than gripping, and with such a dazzling array of characters and scenes, you'll be riveted throughout. Who can forget the allegorical Russian anarchist Souvarine (who I always picture as looking like Xellos from Slayers, for some reason)? The lugubriously tortured sexual longings of M Hennebeau? Or the horses who work in the mine, doomed to live a life...Read more

Why do we have labor laws? Why do we accept nuclear energy and the oil industry? Why did the rich countries become so prosperous? "Germinal" shows you why. Often considered Zola's greatest work, it is indeed a truly epic story skilfully blended with penetrating political and economic analysis, not least of the mixture of motives that push people to stand up for their rights or those of others. Take John Steinbeck's "The Grapes Of Wrath", multiply it by ten or twenty and you won't even come close to this book. Deeply moving, shocking, but ultimately uplifting, for in the wreckage of the miners' crushing defeat after their strike Zola, for once, offers a glimmer of hope. Better to have fought and lost than to have done nothing. The seeds of a new, fairer world have been sown. And one day........