La Terre cover art

La Terre

[The Earth]

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La Terre

By: Émile Zola
Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
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About this listen

Zola’s La Terre (The Earth) proved highly controversial on publication in 1887 and still retains the power to shock. It follows the fortunes of the Fouan family in the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian War. Old Fouan, the patriarch, draws up a legal contract to divide his farmland between his three children in exchange for an allowance that will support him and his wife through a comfortable retirement. Against a backdrop of rural deprivation, drunkenness, violence and sexual abuse, the Fouans’ greed, jealousy and power games cause both the contract and family ties to unravel with tragic consequences.

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Public Domain (P)2022 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.
Classics Family Life Genre Fiction Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
My first Zola novel and it won't be my last.
His writing is beautiful, intense, graphic, gritty but real and human.
Naturalism at its best.
Such a wonderful micro analysis of the daily life and toils & tribulations of the French agricultural peasants post revolution on the cusp of industrialisation and the last days of the small petty land owner class.

His characters are hilarious, like Dickens but, unlike Dickens they are not larger than life or ridiculously overly grotesque or cartoonish, but very real indeed.

Leighton Pugh is the perfect narrator with great character shifts.

Some real laugh out loud moments too amongst these odd but strangely familiar characters, particularly the poor priest 🤣.

AMAZING. Beautiful writing. Exquisite detail.

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