'She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.'Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris. A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress. Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared. Nana is the ninth instalment in the twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The novel opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan lite, was la Ville Lumire, the glittering setting-and object-of Zola's scathing denunciation of society's hypocrisy and moral corruption. Nana comes to symbolize the Second Empire regime itself in all its excesses; but in the final chapters, the narrator seems to suggest that the coming disaster is not so mucha result of the corruption of the Empire, as of rampant female sexuality.
| ISBN: | 9780192545367 |
| Publication date: | 26th March 2020 |
| Author: | Zola, Emile |
| Publisher: | OUP Oxford |
| Format: | Ebook |
'She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.'Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris. A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress. Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared. Nana is the ninth instalment in the twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The novel opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan lite, was la Ville Lumire, the glittering setting-and object-of Zola's scathing denunciation of society's hypocrisy and moral corruption. Nana comes to symbolize the Second Empire regime itself in all its excesses; but in the final chapters, the narrator seems to suggest that the coming disaster is not so mucha result of the corruption of the Empire, as of rampant female sexuality.
Nana features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Classic fiction: general and literary
Nana is available in Ebook, Paperback
Nana was written by Zola, Emile and published by OUP Oxford
£4.99