Germinal (Penguin Classics)
The thirteenth novel in the great Rougon-Macquart sequence expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope.
Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.
Roger Pearson's lively and modern translation is accompanied by an introduction that examines the social and political background to Emile Zola's masterpiece, in particular the changing relationship between labor and capital. This edition also contains a further reading list and filmography, chronology, notes and glossary.
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Community Reviews
Re-read for first time since undergrad.
When I read this the first time, I really enjoyed it, but I don't think I was able to finish it due to having to read it in a Victorian novel course. When you consider how impossible it is to get students to read a whole book, it's mind blowing that I had a single course, alongside four more, in which we had to read a Victorian novel almost every single week (Germinal, Mill on the Floss, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Hard Times, Vanity Fair, Mary Barton, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Story of an African Farm, He Knew He Was Right). So I had trouble finishing things that particular semester.
Any way, this book should probably be required reading. It can get tedious in some parts if you don't feel for the miners and what they have to go through. Just having an idea of what the working class had to endure throughout most of the 19th century made a huge, huge difference to my later political evolution. When you see how bad human life can get, how low the ruling class and moneyed class were willing to let the poor get, it really opens your eyes to why things like an active social care system and active regulators are to a just society. In the end, all the Western countries did was offshore the horrible conditions to factories in the developing world. If we paid the true cost for all the goods we use, considering just living wages for the workers, proper consideration of environmental damage, and maintenance of resources for future generations, life would be very very very expensive. Any way, these are the types of insights that Germinal started me on.
And it does it through a very engaging story - while there are chapters that spend a lot of time on description, there is also a very dynamic plot with life and death stakes.
It also reads a lot faster than you might think - I basically spent two full days plus half of another reading it, maybe about 20 to 22 hours. And this translation at least is very smooth.
It's definitely worth reading!
When I read this the first time, I really enjoyed it, but I don't think I was able to finish it due to having to read it in a Victorian novel course. When you consider how impossible it is to get students to read a whole book, it's mind blowing that I had a single course, alongside four more, in which we had to read a Victorian novel almost every single week (Germinal, Mill on the Floss, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Hard Times, Vanity Fair, Mary Barton, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Story of an African Farm, He Knew He Was Right). So I had trouble finishing things that particular semester.
Any way, this book should probably be required reading. It can get tedious in some parts if you don't feel for the miners and what they have to go through. Just having an idea of what the working class had to endure throughout most of the 19th century made a huge, huge difference to my later political evolution. When you see how bad human life can get, how low the ruling class and moneyed class were willing to let the poor get, it really opens your eyes to why things like an active social care system and active regulators are to a just society. In the end, all the Western countries did was offshore the horrible conditions to factories in the developing world. If we paid the true cost for all the goods we use, considering just living wages for the workers, proper consideration of environmental damage, and maintenance of resources for future generations, life would be very very very expensive. Any way, these are the types of insights that Germinal started me on.
And it does it through a very engaging story - while there are chapters that spend a lot of time on description, there is also a very dynamic plot with life and death stakes.
It also reads a lot faster than you might think - I basically spent two full days plus half of another reading it, maybe about 20 to 22 hours. And this translation at least is very smooth.
It's definitely worth reading!
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