L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) (Penguin Classics)

With its naturalistic description and street argot, L'Assommoir vividly evokes the poverty and squalor beneath the superficial glamour of Parisian life under the Second Empire. But in telling the story of the rise and downfall of the laundress Gervaise Macquart, Zola surmounts his moral and social intentions.