The Belly of Paris (Sun and Moon Classics, No 70)
Publisher: Sun & Moon Press
Published: February 1996
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 397
ISBN-13: 9781557130662
Subjects: 19th century fiction; Modern fiction; French Novel And Short Story; Fiction - General; Fiction; General
Description: Little known in this country, The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris) is one of Emile Zola's most wonderfully descriptive, humorous, and exciting fictions. In this novel the author of Germinal, L'Assommoir, Nana and Therese Raquin chooses as his locale the newly built food markets of Paris. Into this extravagance of food - which Zola describes in set pieces that wet the tongue, excite the ear, and stir up the belly - he places his young hero, the half-starved Florent, who has just escaped imprisonment in Cayenne. Florent finds himself at odds with a world he now knows is unjust. Gradually he takes up with the local Socialists, who are more at home in bars than on the revolutionary streets.