Émile François Zola was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism. More than half of Zola’s novels were part of a set of twenty novels about a family under the Second Empire collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart.
L’Assommoir (1877) is the seventh novel in the series. Usually considered one of Zola’s masterpieces, the novel — a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris — was a huge commercial success and established Zola’s fame and reputation throughout France and the world. (Summary edited from Wikipedia)
