The Fat and the Thin (1873) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. The third of twenty volumes of Zola’s monumental Les Rougon-Macquart series is an epic story of family, politics, class, and history that traces the disparate paths of several French citizens raised by the same mother. Spanning the entirety of the French Second Empire, Zola provides a sweeping portrait of change that refuses to shy away from controversy and truth as it gets to the heart of heredity and human nature. Arrested in the crackdowns that followed the French coup of 1851, Florent, an innocent man, manages to escape prison and return to Paris. Desperate to avoid capture, he finds a place to stay with his half-brother Quenu and his wife Lisa, a member of the Macquart family. With his brother’s help, Florent finds work as a fish inspector at Les Halles, an enormous central market. Redesigned in the aftermath of the coup, the market has become a symbol of wealth and power for the French Second Empire, and is an important hub for the nation’s growing economy. Apolitical in nature—he was sent to prison based on false information—Florent becomes interested in socialism through his experience as a laborer and with the encouragement of radical acquaintances, and soon becomes swept up in a plot to overthrow the government of Napoleon III. The Fat and the Thin is a story of family and fate, a thrilling and detailed novel that continues a series rich enough for its author to explore in twenty total volumes. This edition of Émile Zola’s The Fat and the Thin is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
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About the author
Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.
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