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Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart #13)

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 8,938 ratings · 394 reviews

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally importan...more

Paperback, 476 pages

Published October 11th 2007 by BiblioLife (first published 1885)

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Aug 31, 2009 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Felt like reading a Naturlist, and I remembered Zola. Germinal was the only Zola novel on the library shelf, and I chose it merely in deferrence to the author. Little did I know that many critics believe Germinal is one of the 10 best French novels ever written.

I like stories where people are ground down by nature--poverty, weather, work conditions, hunger--and the lower economic demographic is forced to suffer and survive. The Industrial Revolution offered so many ways to catalogue the sufferi...more

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Aug 18, 2011 ☽ Moon ☯ 佛月球 Будда Луны rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

δ∝•☜ THE CLAMOR FOR SOCIAL EQUITY ☞•∝δ

Germinal refers to the season of spring, the time of renewal when the seed of life starts to sprout again from the ground, germinating hope after the long dormancy of winter.

Émile Zola symbolically refers to this spring of hope as the wretched lives of the coal miners, amidst the sour inflictions of deprivation, leading to their depraved lives, slowly awaken from their long years of passive obedience, allowing them to see a picture of a better life as it hust...more

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May 28, 2008 Aaron rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Germinal is Zola's supposed masterpiece chronicling a miner's strike in a French coal-mining town. I expected a thoroughly depressing book, and that's what I got.

I had a couple of issues with the book. First of all, the main characters felt very flat. There wasn't much to interest you in them, especially the main character, Etienne. The most interesting characters Souvarine, Bonnemort, Jeanlin, Deneulin, get reduced to bit roles and instead you're just left with fragments of them, but maybe tha...more

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Dec 12, 2008 Graham rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, classics, literature, favourites

GERMINAL - what can I say? I studied this book at university and my whole degree course was worth the time and effort just for introducing me to the author. GERMINAL now stands as my favourite book of all time, an intense masterpiece of fiction.

The basic storyline is a miner's strike. It doesn't sound too good or too detailed, but it's all here: politics, chaos, social realism, a love story, an action story, heroes and villains, the good and the bad. Yes, it is melodramatic, but I guess I like m...more

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Oct 29, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pernod-and-gauloises, novels, voluminous, pre-1900s, penguin-classics

This novel is about as grim and horrendous as literature gets. Instead of ranting about the history of human suffering at various pitches of bowel-plopping rage, let me take a more facetious route. Let me instead discuss various mining experiences lived out on the Sega Mega Drive. Remember Mega Bomberman? Those who do will remember the mine level.

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This level was pivotal in the game, since here a remote-controlled power-up was available which was crucial for facing down the final boss, whose beard...more This novel is about as grim and horrendous as literature gets. Instead of ranting about the history of human suffering at various pitches of bowel-plopping rage, let me take a more facetious route. Let me instead discuss various mining experiences lived out on the Sega Mega Drive. Remember Mega Bomberman? Those who do will remember the mine level.

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This level was pivotal in the game, since here a remote-controlled power-up was available which was crucial for facing down the final boss, whose beardy metamorphoses proved impossible without both a back-up life and a self-detonator. The problem was using the detonator hastily, as an ill-timed whack of the C button would invariably blow up the hero, who had a hard enough time dodging bombs. The mining level itself involved negotiating the terrain on a little blue cart and threats from crazed red baddies, stumbling around the scorching hellhole with startled eyes, running into bombs like kamikaze hearts.

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Then there was Lava Reef Zone, on Sonic & Knuckles. The presence of fire and darkness usually indicated the impending doom of Robotnik and his enormous egg-shaped earth-conquering moustachiopod. Since the introduction of fire-proof TVs, leaping onto scorching lava wasn’t a great concern for Sonic. This level involved spinning down into an underground mine, where giant crushers and ledges threatened his pretty blue head.

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And there was Scrap Brain Zone. A factory filled with trap-flaps, flame pipes and crushers, its backdrop a bleak brown silhouette of chimneys and skyscrapers. The foes being caterpillars who died by careful bops to the head and little bomb-men in metal helmets who blew up when you ran past. The challenges were all mechanical—spinning ledges, squishing ledges, vanishing ledges. A holy wine cup with black grapes shooting electricity from both sides, razors looming over sluggish conveyor belts. Some of the most terrifying moments of my childhood happened on this level. Fact.

But about Germinal? Imagine the amount of times Sonic gets crushed by gamers the world over, then transfer that to human lives, and you have the sorry state of 1800s French mining. For more info read my forthcoming book Zola the Hedgehog: When Rocks Fall On Top of People.(less)

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Sep 03, 2007 Rob rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: college

See also: my review of Cousin Bette .

An assigned reading for a college class. My "classics" digestion enzyme was not being secreted. I failed to appreciate it.

A classic? Perhaps. A masterful depiction of its era? Perhaps. At all enjoyable? Not by me and certainly not at the time.

And once again: it seems there are so many positive reviews of the text that I ought re-visit it. (We'll see...)

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May 09, 2013 Alisea rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finiti

Figlio di Gervaise Macquart e del suo amante Lantier, il giovane Étienne Lantier è stato allontanato dal lavoro per aver schiaffeggiato il suo capo. Disoccupato e in piena crisi industriale, decide di partire per il Nord alla ricerca di un nuovo impiego. Viene assunto alle miniere di Montsou, dove scopre le spaventose condizioni di lavoro dei minatori.
Étienne conosce una famiglia di minatori, i Maheu, e si innamora della giovane Catherine; quest'ultima è l'amante di un rude operaio, Chaval, e s...more

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Jan 22, 2012 Leftbanker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, all-time-favorites

Moi, je vois autrement. Je n’ai guère de souci et de beauté et de perfection.Je me moque des grands siècles.Je n’ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre. -Émile Zola

Zola is the supreme novelist, at least how I interpret that vocation. Like Dickens, Zola went out and studied France and her people for inspiration while Proust sat in a cork-lined room and dreamed up all of his stories in his head. I'll take journalism over the human imagination any day. Germinal is the essence of this style of wri...more Moi, je vois autrement. Je n’ai guère de souci et de beauté et de perfection. Je me moque des grands siècles. Je n’ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre. -Émile Zola

Zola is the supreme novelist, at least how I interpret that vocation. Like Dickens, Zola went out and studied France and her people for inspiration while Proust sat in a cork-lined room and dreamed up all of his stories in his head. I'll take journalism over the human imagination any day. Germinal is the essence of this style of writing. I like how Zola doesn't romanticize the life of the miners as he shows the terrible conditions of their work. I love how Zola trained his eye on an aspect of his society that desperately needed change and tried to effect that change. One of the culminations of this new power of the pen was his activism in the Dreyfuss Affair.

I don't have much use for the other school of novelist represented by Proust. This seems to be the one followed by so much of the current literary output in America. Whenever I read a synopsis of a novel by one of the most favored American writers and the story deals with either a writer or a university professor, my eyes roll back in my head so hard I almost fall over backwards. I'm talking about Bellow, Irving, Updike, Cheever, Roth, Carol Oates, to name a few of these types who can't seem to be bothered to leave their university jobs and cocktail parties to find something worth writing about. Instead, they obsess over the little lives of intellectuals—sort of like Woody Allen and his childish fixation with relationships. Go out and learn something new.

They always say that you should write about what you know. The problem is most of these writers don't know much. Their knowledge of politics and economics is embarrassing. Do some homework before writing and stop relying on your tired imagination. When I read something I can almost always tell if the author is a university professor. They almost all have the same lifeless style. They only write for other academics.

I am working hard this year to improve my French so that I can read this classic in the original.(less)

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Jul 19, 2007 William rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Erin, Katy

In 1871, Zola began a 20 volume series called Les Rougon-Macquart of which Germinal is the 13th, written in 1885. The series chronicles the life of one extended family in a tale that explores the class structure in France during the Second Empire. While he surveys the society from top to bottom, he is also weaves in the influence of environment and heredity on position and behavior. Its an incredible series, and as each novel is its own character study, between the first and the last books, you...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Paul Sheckarski rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At this point in his career Zola had achieved a mastery of voice, and leaps from vicious criticism of the bourgeois to: sympathetic inhabitation of Monsieur Hennebeau's quiet, desperate life; celebration of Deneulin's heroism & courage; and exposals of the mob's ugly & illogical whims. Furthermore, Zola writes within each of these voices either tinged with irony or straight-faced, as the moment calls for it. This has undoubtedly led many readers to think of Zola as a mere ideologue. Thou...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Ensiform rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, french

Translated by Havelock Ellis. This 480-page monster is a novel about the exploitation of poor workers by the idle bourgeoisie. The plot was well-crafted, and the characters were well-rounded and realistic: some workers were bastards, some of the “masters” kind-hearted --- although totally naive about the condition of their workers. There was perhaps too much purple prose, but the scenes of destruction (as when the strikers cut the elevator wires in one pit, and the workers inside 700 ladders to...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Mandy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I learnt a lot from reading this book about what it is like to live a miner's life underground. About the hard work that goes into mining especially in the olden days. How hard it would be to live underground and the darkness that oppresses people and the continual struggle to meet daily mining quota just to eat. The worry that you could be killed by a rockfall at any moment and the perpetual fear for your life in one way or the other. The extreme poverty and destitution that comes with being a...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Adrianna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, for-class, historical-fiction, social-commentary

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. To begin, I want to clarify that I would actually give Germinal 3.5 stars. Germinal was assigned reading for my European history class, and I had been dreading reading it largely due to the length and my lack of knowledge about the book’s plot. Yet once I picked up the book and Etienne walked across the page out of “a starless, ink-dark night” (5), I was captivated. I could barely put the novel down until I discovered the outcomes of Etienne and those around him.

Zola’s breathtaking, descriptive...more To begin, I want to clarify that I would actually give Germinal 3.5 stars. Germinal was assigned reading for my European history class, and I had been dreading reading it largely due to the length and my lack of knowledge about the book’s plot. Yet once I picked up the book and Etienne walked across the page out of “a starless, ink-dark night” (5), I was captivated. I could barely put the novel down until I discovered the outcomes of Etienne and those around him.

Zola’s breathtaking, descriptive language completely immersed me in the impoverished, degraded existence of the miners of Monsou, as well as the contrary cozy existence of the local bourgeoisie. His continual use of juxtapositions throughout the novel probed issues of suffering, class struggle, mob mentality, the futilities and benefits of resistance, and ultimately, the state of the human condition. Rather than employing static, one-dimensional caricatures of the social classes and the various ideological strains running throughout the book, Zola subtly developed his characters into believable, real people, with complex and often contradictory textures, reasoning, and convictions.

The end of Germinal echoes the novel’s beginning, as Etienne is once again journeying down an open road to a new location, while the miners are back in their pits. This caused me to question whether Zola had taken me and his characters anywhere in the novel, or whether we were all back in the same positions. However, the ending lines, which could seem trite to some, were for me an optimistic outlook on human potential in spite of the heart-wrenching, senseless violence of the previous pages, which truly haunted me and caused me to question the nature of humanity. Zola seems to be telling his readers that continual forward motion is necessary. Through new experiences we become more ready than ever to confront injustice, as we also become less pacified with the status quo. I find this novel’s issues resonant and relevant for our world today, where we continue to grapple with issues of power, class, and the meaning of justice for humanity.
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Feb 04, 2013 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

** Some spoilers within **

An extremely intriguing story that moves along with several sub-plots – all of them well interconnected. The style is very social oriented – in this case exploring the lives of coal miners in the north of France. It resembles Dickens who was concerned with both social issues and class issues; but unlike Dickens, who was very puritanical; the sexual passages in “Germinal” are really quite forthright – for instance women have menstrual cycles.

Zola, I would say, is somewhe...more ** Some spoilers within **

An extremely intriguing story that moves along with several sub-plots – all of them well interconnected. The style is very social oriented – in this case exploring the lives of coal miners in the north of France. It resembles Dickens who was concerned with both social issues and class issues; but unlike Dickens, who was very puritanical; the sexual passages in “Germinal” are really quite forthright – for instance women have menstrual cycles.

Zola, I would say, is somewhere between Dickens and Orwell. There is a proletariat here – and it is not an idolized proletariat. They engage in sexual relations upon reaching puberty, and after that they beat their spouses. The depictions of starvation, of the work in coal mines, of the rallies of the workers – are all extremely poignant and stunning. This book is a page turner.

“Germinal” is more event driven than character driven. Sometimes the characters seem more like “types” – representing a socialist, an anarchist, a working class person... Zola makes the events derive a life of their own – like the strikes – which propels people in unexpected ways. This is very much true to life, where once a course is decided upon, predictions and theories go out the window.

In some ways women are cast as down-trodden and suitable only for sexual gratification and motherhood; but perhaps this is a reflection of the era. The lives of the women in this story are sordid – they have no hope of escaping the enslavement of raising several children on subsistence wages. The upper class women seem intent on acquiring power through the use of sex. Catherine, however, is probably the most complex character in the story – rivaling Etienne. At times Catherine has an aura of saintliness about her – we want her to break out of her cage and we sense her desire to do so. But in the end, she too becomes trapped.

This was the first time I have read a book of Zola and it was a very positive experience.
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Apr 12, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, history, favorites, read-in-2009

This is just one book in Zola's 20-volume Rougons-Macquart cycle, his magnum opus which traces the fortunes of different branches of the same family throughout the great upheavals of 19th century France, but it got good reviews so it's the first one I read. Zola has a fantastic eye for detail in addition to his amusingly dated theories of congenital sin (the main character gets crazy when he's drunk just like his ancestors, and the other characters also have sins-of-the-father inheritances that...more

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Oct 02, 2011 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Gripping tale of a coal mine strike in 1860s France. Somewhat political, which to be honest, wasn't the biggest draw for me. However, the tale is humanized by heartbreaking poverty of the miners. Led by idealistic, naive Etienne Lantier, and enwidened by his interactions with the endlessly put upon Maheu family, and in particular their lovely daughter Catherine, who shares an ill-fated affair with Etienne. The rest of the town and management and their families are beautifully realized in the be...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Mary Overton added it · review of another edition

Working conditions in an 1866 French coal mine:
"The four hewers had just taken up position, stretched out at different levels one above the other and covering the entire height of the coal-face. Wooden planks, secured by hooks, stopped the coal from falling after they had cut it, and between these planks each man occupied a space of about four metres along the seam. This particular seam was so thin, barely fifty centimetres at this point, that they found themselves virtually crushed between roof...more Working conditions in an 1866 French coal mine:
"The four hewers had just taken up position, stretched out at different levels one above the other and covering the entire height of the coal-face. Wooden planks, secured by hooks, stopped the coal from falling after they had cut it, and between these planks each man occupied a space of about four metres along the seam. This particular seam was so thin, barely fifty centimetres at this point, that they found themselves virtually crushed between roof and wall; they had to drag themselves forward on their elbows and knees and were quite unable to turn round without banging their shoulders. In order to get at the coal they had to lie on one side, twist their necks, and use both arms in order to raise their rivelaine, a short-handled pick, which they wielded at an angle.
"Zacharie was at the bottom; then came Levaque and Chaval above him, and finally Maheu at the very top. Each man hacked into the shale bedrock, digging it out with his pick. Then he would make two vertical cuts in the coal, insert an iron wedge into the space above, and prise out a lump. The coal was soft, and the lump would break into pieces which then rolled down over his stomach and legs. Once these pieces had piled up against the boards put there to retain them, the hewers disappeared from view, immured in their narrow cleft.
"Maheu had the worst of it. Up at the top the temperature reached thirty-five degrees; there was no circulation of air, and the suffocating atmosphere was potentially fatal. In order to see what he was doing he had to hang his lamp from a nail, just by his head; and the continued heat of the lamp on his skull eventually raised his body temperature to fever level. But it was the wetness that made life particularly difficult. The rock above him, just a few centimetres from his face, was streaming with water, and large drops of it would keep falling in regular, rapid succession, always landing with stubborn insistence on exactly the same spot. Try as he might to twist his neck or bend his head back, they splattered remorselessly against his face and burst. After a quarter of an hour he would be soaked through, and with his body also bathed in sweat he steamed like a wash-tub. That particular morning a drop of water was continually hitting him in the eye, and it made him curse. He didn't want to stop hewing, and as he continued to hack fiercely at the rock, his body shook violently in the narrow space, like a greenfly caught between the leaves of a book and about to be squashed completely flat.
"Not a word was exchanged. Everyone was tapping away, and all that could be heard was the irregular clunk-clunk of the picks, which seemed to come from far away. There were no echoes in this airless place, and sounds were more like a dull rasping. The darkness itself seemed to consist of an unfamiliar blackness that was thick with flying coal-dust and filled with gases that made the eyelids heavy. The wicks in the lamps were no more than reddish pinpricks of light beneath their gauze mantles. One could see almost nothing, and the coal-face simply rose into a pitch-black void, like a broad, flat, sloping chimney piled high with the soot of a dozen winters. Ghostly shapes moved about in it, and chance gleams of light picked out the curve of a hip, or a sinewy arm, or a wild-looking face blackened as though in readiness for a crime. From time to time, lumps of coal would gleam in the darkness as they came away, suddenly illuminated - a flat surface here, a sharp edge there - by the glint of light on crystal. Then it would all be dark again, and apart from the loud thudding of the picks all that could be heard were gasping lungs and the occasional groan of discomfort and fatigue caused by the thick air and the water raining down from the underground springs."
Kindle location 1359-87(less)

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Aug 25, 2011 Jim Neeley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.", (from My Hates, Emile Zola 1866)

It was an unnerving coincidence that I started reading this epic novel of a French mine disaster and labor strike as the events at Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, which resulted in the loss of 29 lives. The story is long gone from the media, but reading the book I kept thinking of those lost...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Aiko rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Germinal is the one story that made me feel all emotion. It accounts the general unfairness of the world with the separation of people into classes—conventionally the bourgeoisie or the masters, and the serfs and the slaves--and details on the conflicts between them. It also suggests ways upon which such a system could be abolished—presenting many socialist theories, mainly anarchy. In the end, though the capitalists remained victor, since the poor had so much more to lose, the book still gives...more Germinal is the one story that made me feel all emotion. It accounts the general unfairness of the world with the separation of people into classes—conventionally the bourgeoisie or the masters, and the serfs and the slaves--and details on the conflicts between them. It also suggests ways upon which such a system could be abolished—presenting many socialist theories, mainly anarchy. In the end, though the capitalists remained victor, since the poor had so much more to lose, the book still gives off a sort of optimism—as it is spring at the time, and hosts a rising tide of a force that would soon surely ‘crack the earth asunder’. The poor have stepped back for now, starved and beaten after dismal months of staging a strike and inciting havoc in the community and the papers, but they refuse to remain the oppressed, and would in the future surely be saved by [another] revolution (seen as the ‘real’ one).

Germinal was most certainly tragic, but one has a lot to learn from it. At one point I’d find myself shaking with mirth, and then with anger and rage the next. My heart went out to the characters, especially to Alzire, at whose death I found myself with tears. I pitied the miners and hated them the same and was especially exasperated by Etienne—oh I do blame him for all that misfortune! And I liked the personality of Maheude as she seemed logical most of the time. When she was seized by bloodlust and ran around like a madman, just as the others, I failed to find this aggravating (as surely I would have and did with the others)—I saw it as simply as the need to release the pent-up emotions that have stocked on for long; she just could not contain it any longer. Catherine only irked me, for her ‘inherited ideas of subordination and passive obedience’ was outlandish (the girls were generally this way, and ‘planted’ with babies even as kids themselves). She was always ready to submit to her man, Chaval, with the simple logic that she was his, as he was the first to claim her.

The poor:

People were, as they have for a long time, held in check by the strength of the hierarchy—the military system which held them down, from pit-boy to overman, by putting each in the power of another. This explains why the Gregoires, one of the owners of the Montsou Mining Company, remained passive and unruffled by the strike, the strikers having a provident fund (though it was a petty one at the time of the strikeand at less than three thousand francs, failed to hold for long) and them joining the International and running all around the province making sure the strike was made general, as they were sure that the old system would remain the same. ‘Oh, I’m sure there is no real malice in them. When they have had a good shout they’ll go home with a better appetite for supper!’ Leon Gregoire only commented even he was trapped in the Hennebeau’s alongside the others, with an enraged thousand scores of people protesting outside. And the bosses seemed to be held in high regard by the miners, even with their detestable situation. There generally are decent people in all walks of life (Maheude said in a discussion with Etienne), and this included the bosses. The bosses were charitable and almost paternal and their one failing was the refusal to see how capitalism was killing off men for generations. They were even held in awe for ‘which the managing director inspired in his ten thousand employees’.

‘I’m all for calmness, it’s the only way of getting along, but in the end they drive you mad.’ Maheu, incensed, had exclaimed. With the coming along of Etienne though, things seemed to change.

Etienne has not been formally educated and he kept his insecurities at bay with the acknowledgement of the need for study. He was a self-professed leader of the miners who he managed to make believe in their ability to overthrow the old system which has gone on for more than a century. ‘When you want everything at once, you end up with nothing’, Rasseneur, jealous of the former’s popularity, told him. It was unfortunate that Etienne was carried along with the perks of being a leader and started to see himself as more than the people he was surrounded with, and not just one of them. His leading of the miners to fighting back was tainted by his ambitions and the hunger to be looked up to (the organization International achieved not much for this very reason). Souvarine (the destructive freak responsible for the destruction of Le Voyeux and the death of Catherine and 13 more others) has proposed in a hypothesis that even after the old system gets abolished, traces of the old system would just carry on naturally, and there again would eventually be a distinction between the rich and the hardworking, and the poor and the lazy. He therefore proposes complete anarchy, a view which coincides with one of Monsieur Hennebeau’s, ‘nonexistence as a way to happiness’.

The man was seen as the master in the house. A woman who was already married at the beginning of the novel was named with the female version of her husband’s surname (In French, everything was either masculine or feminine. There was no such thing as an ‘it’—seen as neuter in English). Maheude, despite her own strong character and obviously important role in the novel, was expected to submit to her husband’s whims—she stood there assisting him even as he ate. She also was expected to produce miracles to continually feed the family, as the hard-earned pay from work hardly sufficed for a family of 10.

Most women were seen as tarts, and picked up their first babies even when they were children themselves (Catherine had her first intercourse before puberty). As for the lack of resources and money to involve themselves in any other than work and the hard job to keep alive, sex and gossip stood to be the only forms of entertainment. An established family was often a big one.

Children, at the age of eight, or nine or ten, were expected to bring back to the family that has provided for them in their first years as useless good-for-nothing infants. When Catherine had run off to work at Jean-Bart with Chaval, Maheu, her father, defeated, simply threw his arms up in resignation, was not new to children setting off early, leaving their parents destitute.

There was a sharp contrast between the way of living of the poor, and the rich: highlighted off by Zola in his comparing the Maheus and the Gregoires. While the Maheu toiled underground in risks of killing themselves, they were often hungry—as they earned less than what’s needed to keep decent meals. They were immersed in credit, at Maigrat’s. The Gregoires meanwhile had not the need for work and stayed at home with earnings of forty thousand francs per year. Monsieur Gregoire was sure that even with this Catherine’s children’s children would keep living in luxury.

It also seemed that most people were not extreme believers, and had no inkling for deep faith in god, especially the poor. They had started to lose hope and thought that god was no more. Maheude exclaimed, ‘Surely we are finished!’ The proposition of a happier life in the next world was only laughed at.

Summing it up, Germinal was a great book--one to learn many things from. Although it almost drove me mad (I often found myself wanting to just rip and tear off the pages), it is one that I recommend that everyone should read. At times crude, moving, and always astonishing, it's a crucial eye-opener.
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Aug 11, 2012 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The way Zola describes life, deep underground in the labyrinth mining tunnels, and not only the people who stoop and scrape to survive via mine work -- but most impressive to me, how Zola IMAGINES the point of view of the particularly non-human animals, the horses who worked in the mine, and who lived for years in the darkness, and the loneliness of the horses lives: this novel has so much in it, and if anyone is interested in the plight of working people, and the complexity of this sort of indu...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Andrea Ika rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope. Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families....more The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope. Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

Review
The title, Germinal, is drawn from the springtime seventh month of the French Revolutionary Calendar and is meant to evoke imagery of germination, new growth and fertility.
It is hard not to be moved by the plight of the French coal miners whose story is told in Zola’s Germinal. They are exploited by the mining company they work for, and live in terrible squalor and hereditary indignity. They are only vaguely aware of their situation - that they should expect more - given that it has been 70 or so years since the “glorious” French Revolution.

The main character, Etienne, comes to the northern town of Montsou and we see the squalor of the miner’s life through his eyes. When the miners go on strike in retaliation against a sneaky wage cut, this idealistic young Parisian becomes their leader. Unfortunately his oratory and half-baked socialism whip the miners up into such a frenzy that they go on the rampage. The strike degenerates into an irrational attempt to ruin the company that provides their only source of employment.

The saddest moment in the novel comes when the strikers attack a modern neighbouring mine, which is owned by a hardworking, risk-taking entrepreneur who treats his workers fairly. The attack kills workers and ruins the owner, who eventually has to sell out to the company against which the workers are striking.

I enjoyed this raw, moving novel – though it is quite sad!

Summary
A great book based on the class struggle, Zola also investigates the tactical differences between socialist oriented, working class union organising and the more circumspect anarchist tactic, 'the propaganda of the deed'

Reading level :adult

Rating : 5 stars
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Feb 19, 2013 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french-connection

This is the thirteenth book in the series and the sixteenth one that I've read. I read the Leonard Tancock translation from 1954.

As one might expect in a series of twenty novels some are better than others. Now, I haven't come across a bad one so far, but some stand out above the rest and Germinal is one of those. If you haven't read any Zola books then Germinal is a good place to start. It's five hundred pages long but it is an easy read due to Zola's naturalistic style and there's plenty of pl...more

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Feb 12, 2011 Angie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mid Feb: Finished last night and this book is exactly what I love in a novel: international and depressing. If you like books about other countries where your favorite characters live miserable lives and then die, this book is for you. The writing was excellent, the mines described adequately but not in agonizing detail, and the characters, though there were MANY, were well developed. Zola really captured the small town dynamic. I didn't like that there were two actual murders that were not "dea...more

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Jun 16, 2008 Petra X rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like literature, who like socially-relevant stories and delight in a good, long book.

Shelves: fiction

Part of the 20-vol Rougon-Marquart cycle. All the books are good and very differerent, but Nana stands out as being as relevant now as then, as in any time in fact. The girl with the pretty face and no moral problem about capitalising it becomes the most-highly paid courtesan in Paris but looks don't last.

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Jul 17, 2012 Helen Kitson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19c, fiction

I very nearly chucked this book across the room the first time I tried to read it, but I think the problem was I read it straight after reading ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James. Zola’s prose seemed crude by comparison – I missed the sense of artistry I find in writers such as James and Flaubert. I also felt lost in the world Zola had flung me into. I felt I didn’t belong there. When I decided that I had best just bite the bullet and force myself to read the thing, it took me a long while...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Venus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

ژرمینال[Germinal] رمانی از امیل زولا(1)(1840-1902)، نویسندهی فرانسوی، که در 1885 منتشر شد. این سیزدهمین کتاب از دورهی خانوادهی روگون ماکار، یکی از مشهورترین آثار نویسنده است. زولا خود چنین اظهار میدارد که ماجرا بر سر یک اعتصاب است، «قیام حقوق بگیران و فشار به جامعهای که یک لحظه از هم میپاشد و، در یک کلام، مبارزهی سرمایه و کار. اهمیت کتاب در این است، و میخواهم که ناظر بر آینده باشد و مسئلهای را مطرح کند که مهمترین مسئله قرن بیستم خواهد بود

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Sep 21, 2011 Kingfan30 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, adaptions, telegraph-novels

I was initially surprised to find my self enjoying it to start with, the descriptions of the mines, the poverty all seemed very real. When the strike finally happened it all got very political and I found myself a bit bored, the descriptions of speeches and riots seemed to go on for pages. The side I held my interest more was when it returned back to how the families were coping with no money coming in, the fact that could take clothes and stuffing from a mattress to a shop and get money for it...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Jean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic

In GERMINAL, Zola carried me deep into the unfamiliar world of French coalminers circa 1860. Here is a story of people trying to do the right thing, trying to justify that what they are already doing is right, and sometimes getting swept away--even to the point of violence--in the name of Right. It is a world where sex is animalistic and associated more with death than life; where the frilly, well-fed rich blind themselves to the humanity of the poor; where, among the starving workers, loyalty a...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Leonard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-french

The wobbly cages descending into the pit, miners half-naked toiling in the scorching darkness of the mine’s galleries, the veins bursting and flooding the passages, the meager wages the miners receive at the end of the day, the wives desperately scouring for gruel each meal, the parents giving their daughters to the grocer to get flour and sugar; all recounted in a calmly detached voice.

Etienne, a vagrant worker, joined the fraternity and dissatisfied with the inhuman daily drudges and ambitiou...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction

On Earth as it is in Hell

In Germinal, Zola delivers an absolutely blistering indictment of unfettered, Darwinian capitalism, giving the reader a graphic account of life, such as it was, in the coal mines of 19th century France. His finesse at story telling rescues this from simply being a polemic with a plot (as, say, the mind-numbing novels of Ayn Rand). By far, the most depressing book I've read. However, one I'd still recommend; it places life in a bit of perspective. Bearing in mind the hell...more

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About Émile Zola

Émile Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start...more Émile Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations.

As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886).

From 1877 with the publication of l'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy, he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author.

The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.

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Books by Émile Zola

L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) (Les Rougon-Macquart, #7)

La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart, #17)

The Ladies' Paradise (Les Rougon-Macquart, #11)

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Trivia About Germinal

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Quotes from Germinal

“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.” — 49 people liked it

“If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.” — 21 people liked it

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Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart #13)

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