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Emile Zola (1840-1902) is the author of Les Rougon-Macquart - a cycle of 20 novels written over a period of 22 years including Nana(1880), Germinal (1885) and The Drinking Den (1877)- which provides a panoramic view of life under Napoleon III. He was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. Zola campaigned for justice over the Dreyfus affair - 'it is up to us poets to nail the guilty to the eternal pillory' - and his open letter to the President 'J'accuse' landed him a prison sentence that he evaded only through exile in England. He is buried in the Pantheon alongside Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel, Ulverton, was published in 1992, and he has written nine others, two collections of stories and six books of poetry - most recently Voluntary. Thorpe's translation of Madame Bovary, 'stunning and heartily recommended' (Scotsman), is available in Vintage Classics. He lives in France with his wife and family.
Adam Thorpe's version deserves to become the standard English text -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Telegraph * Anyone who thinks the British contingent brought lurid literature effing and blinding its way to life in the 1990s should be force-fed Emile Zola's 1867 novel Therese Raquin, which, in Adam Thorpe's stark new translation, is revealed in all its queasy glory as a shockingly effective literary mash-up of pulp fiction, melodrama and grimly unflinching social realism -- Tina Jackson * Metro * The translator of this new edition in English, Adam Thorpe...brings an unusual freshness and zip to the task... This handsome Vintage Classics edition contains some useful editorial matter, but not Zola's own preface to the second edition. In that sense, then, it comes close to returning us to the baldness (and boldness) of the original Naturalist document * Times Literary Supplement * [Adam Thorpe] brings an unusual freshness and zip to the task, which goes some way towards returning us to that sense of unnerving immediacy which the young Zola's novel would have given its readers in 1867 -- Nicholas White * Times Literary Supplement * This story seeps into your insides -- Kate Winslet
