The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories

Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in this volume. Concerned with the manifold aspects of everyday life and varying in their settings – from aristocratic drawing rooms to poverty-stricken garrets, from the hustle and bustle of Paris to the Provencal countryside of the author’s childhood – these stories will keep the reader riveted from the beginning to the end and surprise for their modernity.