Wh I love Emile Zola

In the past two years I have discovered my love for a particular man. Unfortunetly he is dead since about 106 years. But than anyway I rather love his work as an author and so much that I really want to point out towards him just in case you have not read any of his books. I´m talking about Emile Zola: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola

Why do you ask? Cause he has that particular naturalistic style of rather observing than to damn his subjects for their wrong-doings. Also his books are far more realistic than similar works of other writers.

Let´s take for example "Nana" which is probably one of his best known books and you should at least have heard the name. Basically it is about the rise and fall of a prostitute. Hence off course she and her surrounding don´t talk and behave like noble folks. They behave like normal people from the street do. Back than and today. They fight, they throw the money out of the window (when they get hand on any), they behave vulgar at times (ok, but is vulgar for their times is almost nothing compared to what you get to see in every talkshow today), they are rude and without much education, however you can´t help but to sympathise sometimes. In comparision to something like "Lady of Camelias" or "Manon Lescaut" you indeed believe them that they are ordinary people.

Rise and fall is a main theme for all his works (altogether it is a book-series of 20 - all about the same family but about different members off course) and you get an insight on how simple people really lived back in Emiles time. He´s painting pictures with his descriptions. When he writes about a department store such as in "The Ladies paradise" you truely get a insight of how it was run, the live conditions of the people actually working in there and the shopping madness (so realistic that you feel like in a huge summer sale for hundreds of pages, you can see and feel the fabrice just through his descriptions). When he writes about the market halls as in "The Belly of Paris" you can almost smell the fish they sell. This guy really knows his stuff!

I love his expressions such as "with the greed of an innocent wild animal" and as mentioned before that he doesn´t moralises that much. Sometimes his anti-heroes even fail without really doing wrong just cause of their surroundings. So far I have readed 5-6 books and allways liked them. I intend to read the whole work little by little - at least all I can find available.

If you are in it for the 19th century and really have an interest about their life conditions you will want to read those!