Zola wrote of this work: "I wanted to depict the inevitable downfall of the working-class family in the polluted atmosphere of our urban areas." This book triumphantly surmounts the author's moral and social intentions to become, perhaps, the first 'classical tragedy' of working-class people living in the slums of Paris.

(Key Words: Fiction, Penguin Classics, Emile Zola, Paris, French Literature, Working Class, Leonard Tancock).