Truth (1903) is a novel by French author Émile Zola. Published as the third installment of his Les Quatre Évangiles, a series of four novels inspired by the New Testament gospels and aimed at investigating prominent social issues, Truth was the last of Zola’s novels to be published when it appeared the year after his death. Combining his trademark naturalist style with aspects of his experience advocating on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew falsely convicted of spying, Zola crafts a story of prejudice and institutional corruption without losing sight of humanity. In a rural village in France, a young boy is discovered murdered and sexually assaulted in his own bedroom. Shocked and outraged, the people of the village initially turn toward a local vagrant as a suspect. As his innocence becomes more and more apparent, however, a story begins to circulate blaming the boy’s uncle, a Jewish schoolmaster, who supposedly resented his brother’s marriage to a Catholic woman. Spurred on by the local church, run by the Christian Brothers, the people stoke the flames of antisemitism while alienating the town’s growing secular minority in order to scapegoat an influential—and innocent—Jewish man. Truth is a terrifying, essential novel that looks unsparingly at the prejudices rampant in European society only decades before the Holocaust. Zola’s final novel is a thrilling examination of the interconnected nature of politics, religion, and the press, and a rallying cry for those brave souls who dare to take a stand against violence and oppression. This edition of Émile Zola’s Truth is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
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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.