Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart, #9)” as Want to Read:
Nana
(Les Rougon-Macquart #9)
by
Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au format numérique par Ebooks libres et gratuits. L’achat de l’édition Kindle inclut le téléchargement via un réseau sans fil sur votre liseuse et vos applications de lecture Kindle.
Get A Copy
Kindle Edition, 436 pages
Published
(first published 1880)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Nana,
please sign up.
Popular Answered Questions
Iman Vaezi
بله وجود دارد، ترجمه آقای عبدالله توکل، ولی دست انتشارات نیلوفر است و هرگز چاپ نکرده. مانند اولیس جیمز جویس
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30

Start your review of Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart, #9)

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." (Oscar Wilde)
Had Nana been a child of today, forced to grow up in the social circumstances of her parents' poverty, violence and alcoholism in the depressing Parisian Goutte d'Or, she would have been moved to a foster family, and sent to family therapy with her brothers.
But Nana was born in 1851, according to the plot of L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) which covers her mother's story. And she learned how to play the underworl ...more
Had Nana been a child of today, forced to grow up in the social circumstances of her parents' poverty, violence and alcoholism in the depressing Parisian Goutte d'Or, she would have been moved to a foster family, and sent to family therapy with her brothers.
But Nana was born in 1851, according to the plot of L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) which covers her mother's story. And she learned how to play the underworl ...more

Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart #9), Émile Zola
Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire.
Nana first appeared near the end of Zola's earlier novel Rougon-Macquart series, L'Assommoir (1877), where she is the daughter of an abusive drunk. At the conclusion of that novel, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.
Nana opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés in April ...more
Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire.
Nana first appeared near the end of Zola's earlier novel Rougon-Macquart series, L'Assommoir (1877), where she is the daughter of an abusive drunk. At the conclusion of that novel, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.
Nana opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés in April ...more

In the year of the fabulous Paris World's Fair, of 1867, when the glamorous city is crowded, with thrill seeking foreign and domestic visitors, Nana Coupeau, a prostitute, makes her unlikely debut also, on stage, in "The Blonde Venus", a spectacular but mediocre operetta. That she can't dance, sing or act, and has a horrible voice, doesn't matter, what is important, Nana is quite beautiful and has charisma, Monsieur Bordenave, the nervous owner of the shabby Opera House,"Varietes", isn't worried
...more

Sep 05, 2012
David
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
france,
une-femme-est-infame
Here's why Nana should never be made into a movie... (Too late. It already has been. Four times.) Emile Zola has created a character so preposterous that casting agents in every corner of the globe would be hard-pressed to locate an actress capable of making her believable. Now I am not claiming that a woman like Nana could not exist—because our world is certainly chock-full of the preposterous—but she would necessarily be so exceptional—such an astounding confluence of so many unlikely variable
...more


Well, well, well.. What a multifaceted portrayal of Nana has Zola left us. As a woman who moved in the fringes, these had more possibilities than a woman who kept herself in her social corset.
She is coy, and “gross et rose”, like this nereid depicted by Paul Baudry.

But Baudry painted Blanche d’Atigny (1840-1874), the courtesan purportedly inspiring Zola for his Nana, and if Nana could dress as the pagan Venus, she could also sit as the Christian Venus, or Mary Magdalen.

But Nana could also ‘se p ...more

Mar 25, 2009
Manny
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
french,
too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts
You've heard of The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold? Well, this is the other kind.
...more
...more

Disclaimer: Whereas I usually try to be objective with my ratings and reviews, with this specific one, I allowed my gut to lead me.
I hated this novel for it's sanctimonious preaching and its rank offensively aggressive misogynism (or perhaps, as has been remarked, it is misanthropy, plain and simple? ..since both men and women are ripped to shreds by the sharp lash of Zola's tongue pen ).
The general milieu in the period of history that this novel is set in, was very unkind to the poor, so good ...more
I hated this novel for it's sanctimonious preaching and its rank offensively aggressive misogynism (or perhaps, as has been remarked, it is misanthropy, plain and simple? ..since both men and women are ripped to shreds by the sharp lash of Zola's
The general milieu in the period of history that this novel is set in, was very unkind to the poor, so good ...more

Introduction
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Émile Zola
--Nana
Explanatory Notes
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Émile Zola
--Nana
Explanatory Notes

Zola’s ninth instalment in the Rougon-Macquart cycle tells the tale of steely-hearted coquette Nana—part-time actress, part-time prostitute, full-time booty-shaking Venus mantrap. The first quarter of the novel is a bacchanalian romp through the Théâtre des Variétés demimonde, introducing Nana’s rolling revue of sexual partners and sugar daddies. After her semi-nude debut (where she shows off her ‘corncrake’ singing voice), she has all Paris’s men drooling at her calves. First she settles down w
...more

I can imagine the outrage this novel (probably one of those racy French novels kept out of the hands of proper Victorian ladies) provoked at the time of publication with its explicit portrait of an actress-cum-prostitute. Zola didn't write to titillate; he himself was outraged (as usual) at a society that was bored, wasteful and decadent, caring only for its own pleasure, thinking nothing of the future, its own excesses causing its collapse.
I went back and forth wondering whether Zola was blami ...more
I went back and forth wondering whether Zola was blami ...more

The trouble was not cruelty on her part, for she remained as good-natured as ever; it was as if a wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly through the closed bedroom. Lust deranged their brains and plunged them into the delirious fantasies of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless nights now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for walking on all fours, growling and biting.
It's easy to see how controversial and shocking this book must have been on publication in 1 ...more

In a couple of brilliant first chapters, Zola describes in detail the role of theatre, a kind of musical comedy of Olympic mythological subject where the eighteen-year-old Nana, unable to sing and act, exhibits her attractive anatomy with cleavage and nudes in transparency. Then he takes us to the girl's house (who has a son since she was sixteen), where the fans stand in line as in a medical consultation, along with the creditors. Nana has to complement what she earns in the theatre and with he
...more

Mar 15, 2013
Dolors
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-before-2011,
best-ever
A raw critic view of the enriched Parisian society in the late XIXth century.
The degradation, the hypocritical standards, the morals and conscience of a corrupted society.
All tattooed in the flesh of Nana, a prostitute of high standards but low esteem.
The degradation, the hypocritical standards, the morals and conscience of a corrupted society.
All tattooed in the flesh of Nana, a prostitute of high standards but low esteem.

Joy unlimited. A long, long time ago my kindly Headmaster recommended I broaden my reading prior to university, and gave me Germinal. I read it somewhat dutifully and marked as done, a knowledge of Zola. Now, man years later, I can read at last. And this book that has been staring from my shelf for years has bombed me out. Nana is a carbonated torrent of the most high speed and energetic writing I have come across. Decay, decadence, death, power, class, cruelty, the brilliant equation of the mus
...more

A stunning indictment of the excesses of the Second Empire in France which implodes on greed and human weakness. Nana is both the cause and the reflection of that greed, as are her countless lovers.
Zola is truly the master of the crowd scene and many of the chapters in this book involve a crowd of people (albeit the same people); be it a behind-the-scenes visit to a theatre during a performance, a party at an aristocratic residence, a party at a prostitute’s residence, a horse race, a wake. The ...more
Zola is truly the master of the crowd scene and many of the chapters in this book involve a crowd of people (albeit the same people); be it a behind-the-scenes visit to a theatre during a performance, a party at an aristocratic residence, a party at a prostitute’s residence, a horse race, a wake. The ...more

Read this in an NEH (to which great institution, now threatened, I owe my mental growth once I was teaching) seminar on Medicine and the Humanities, at Cornell, with Psychiatry (and German) professor Sander Gilman, later President of the 15K member Modern Language Association of America. Much of our seminar became his later books like Seeing the Insane--images, representaations of patients, but also of nurses and physicians. So art history was involved, and even a bit of music, since Sander's wi
...more

What an enlightening look at the backstage of the Parisian stage! It's as busy as a city sidewalk. Speaking of busy, Nana is a mistress of musical bedrooms. The art of the courtesan is new to her, having been a street walker in a previous novel, but she's taken well to it. But the life of a kept woman has numerous restrictions; she's never really a free spirit. There are constant schedule mishaps ( because of course, there must be more than one man unless he's royalty), there may be a child to n
...more

Zola is a writer who normal makes every effort to repel the reader with his sordid naturalism that typically makes a bad reality seem even worse than it is. However, this book about an upscale demi-mondaine is great fun. Perhaps Zola could not bear to make a story about a lady of easy virtue dreary. Read it. You will never enjoy reading Zola as much again.

It might be weird that I begin by the end of the story, but it was indeed what I liked the most in this novel. Well, actually, the last two chapters, for me, are just magnificent: from the literary style to the story itself. I was amazed by Zola’s way to describe decadence and how this man-eater stops having just ‘little bites’ and starts devouring her preys. What thrilled me the most of this book was the fact that I knew the characters were not likeable at all, which is true; that there isn’t a
...more

Now I have listened to 5 hours, and do not like this at all. I have decided to dump it. I find the book boring and the characters unintelligent, with despicable behavior. I don't feel pity or empathy for any of them. Couldn't Zola have thrown in some humor? OK, Zola was a naturalist, but is it realistic to collect together such a bunch of loosers? Are people really this bad? And I am sick to death of the soirées, one after another filled with empty talk and drunkenness. Those at the soirées are
...more

I get it--Nana rose from a fetid pile of garbage and alighted arbitrarily on the upper crust of Parisian society, staining it.
I get it--Nana exposed the myriad faces of man's desires, disgracing them.
I get it--Nana digested men wholly and selfishly, wildly prostituting herself.
I get it, but only in the last couple hundred pages. I'm an ardent fan of Emile Zola, especially the 20 part Les Rougan-Macquart series. His writing is powerful. However, the first 200 pages of Nana was downright boring. T ...more
I get it--Nana exposed the myriad faces of man's desires, disgracing them.
I get it--Nana digested men wholly and selfishly, wildly prostituting herself.
I get it, but only in the last couple hundred pages. I'm an ardent fan of Emile Zola, especially the 20 part Les Rougan-Macquart series. His writing is powerful. However, the first 200 pages of Nana was downright boring. T ...more

I couldn't help but laugh. It just seems funny and crazy in a lampooning way. It's full of sex and the stupidity of people. The more it went on, the more I hoped that the vapid and well-meaning but fiscally and sexually voracious prostitute Nana of the title would screw everyone over, including herself. As she did, repeatedly. It's such a French romp. I mean, really. France produces 120 Days of Sodom, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Story of O.. and Nana.
"Nana shot through like a cloud of inva...more

May 31, 2011
Alex
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
french-original,
literature
For those who like time travel, not to a virtual time someone makes up, but to a real one such as Paris in the 1870’s, those who want vivid, detailed, and realistic imagery, minimal moralization, or those who want to sample “naturalist” or “scientific” literature, Nana is a perfect specimen.
Here we follow a first-rate Parisian courtesan into her home, every room, including the bathroom, to see her clients, what they do, talk about, eat, and how much money changes hands, what her room maid, cook ...more
Here we follow a first-rate Parisian courtesan into her home, every room, including the bathroom, to see her clients, what they do, talk about, eat, and how much money changes hands, what her room maid, cook ...more

Nana
is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, which I undertook to read in publication order some years ago. In some ways, my appreciation for this novel has grown in direct proportion to my increasing dislike for most, if not all the characters in the story, though oddly enough there seems to be no direct correlation between the two factors.
Nana is the daughter of Gervaise Macquart, the doomed alcoholic heroine of L'Assommoir, book 9 in the series. Towards the ...more
Nana is the daughter of Gervaise Macquart, the doomed alcoholic heroine of L'Assommoir, book 9 in the series. Towards the ...more

An amazing febrile whopper of a book. Nana, an actress and courtesan, is a one woman wrecking ball, the flame upon which a host of moths blinded by desire hurl themselves. Zola really does not pull his punches at any stage and the book rockets through to ever increasing lurid madness conjuring up the image of the Empire of the 1870s as a boat careening around a whirlpool as anchor after anchor snaps away. The ending in the particular uses a symbolism so pungent and gothic that one forgives the l
...more

Nana is the daughter of Gervaise from L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop). Nana is a prostitute, hedonist, and narcissist. She has enormous sex appeal, able to attract men of enormous wealth with the crook of her finger.
It was very interesting reading this practically on the heels of Balzac's Cousin Bette, which had a similar theme. Balzac is told more from the view of the men, while Zola told from the female viewpoint. Nana's character is very well-developed - one is both fascinated and repelled. The p ...more
It was very interesting reading this practically on the heels of Balzac's Cousin Bette, which had a similar theme. Balzac is told more from the view of the men, while Zola told from the female viewpoint. Nana's character is very well-developed - one is both fascinated and repelled. The p ...more

That day she had read a novel which was all the rage, the story of a prostitute. And she was indignant, she said it was quite untrue, and declared she found such literature, which claimed to reflect life as it really was, disgusting, highly offensive. As if a writer could possibly describe everything! What were novels written for? To help you pass the time agreeably of course!Zola’s self-mocking passage in Nana is one of the very few lighthearted moments in this novel. There are few virtuous, li ...more

This is Nana. Watch Nana fuck. Fuck, Nana, fuck.
That is the plot of Emile Zola's Nana. It is a 19th Century French novel, which means it's this big messy melodramatic soap opera. But it's so much fun! Nana is a man-eater to make anyone on Days of Our Lives blush, tangled up not only in prostitution, but in gambling, gluttony, promiscuity, lesbian kidnappings (?!), sadomasochism, suicide, murder, and, most importantly for Zola, economic catastrophe. Not only can she burn down the lives of those a ...more
That is the plot of Emile Zola's Nana. It is a 19th Century French novel, which means it's this big messy melodramatic soap opera. But it's so much fun! Nana is a man-eater to make anyone on Days of Our Lives blush, tangled up not only in prostitution, but in gambling, gluttony, promiscuity, lesbian kidnappings (?!), sadomasochism, suicide, murder, and, most importantly for Zola, economic catastrophe. Not only can she burn down the lives of those a ...more

It started with my admission (principally to myself, though I placed it on my blog, which means principally to myself) that I didn't know the difference between realism and naturalism - still figuring it out, but I think naturalism means you don't have to have a plot.
...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Reading the 20th ...: Nana by Emile Zola (November 2020) | 46 | 17 | Nov 11, 2020 11:49AM | |
Reading the 20th ...: Nana by Émile Zola (November 2020) | 1 | 8 | May 11, 2020 01:17AM | |
Goodreads Librari...: Please combine | 2 | 8 | Mar 21, 2020 09:01AM | |
2015 Reading Chal...: Nana by Emile Zola | 1 | 24 | Jul 15, 2015 11:58AM |
Émile François 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 ...more
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 ...more
Other books in the series
Les Rougon-Macquart
(1 - 10 of 20 books)
Related Articles
We all have our reading bucket lists. James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is bound to seriously expand that list...
115 likes · 55 comments
5 trivia questions
1 quiz
More quizzes & trivia...
1 quiz
“A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.”
—
24 likes
“All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.”
—
18 likes
More quotes…