The Ladies' Paradise cover art

The Ladies' Paradise

Au Bonheur des Dames

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Ladies' Paradise

By: Émile Zola
Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £22.99

Buy Now for £22.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames, 1883) plays out in a colossal and opulent Parisian department store of the same name. Its owner, Octave Mouret, builds his innovative, upmarket women’s fashion empire at the expense of the city’s smaller, traditional shops.

A self-declared manipulator of women, Mouret not only plays on his female customers’ personal insecurities and social aspirations to keep his takings high, but also exploits his mostly female staff who work long hours in harsh conditions. After a difficult start, one young recruit, Denise Baudu, ends up giving Mouret much more than he bargained for.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2021 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd. Classics

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Kill cover art
Thérèse Raquin cover art
Blood, Sex and Money cover art
Oblomov cover art
Buddenbrooks cover art
The Lady with the Dog cover art
Cousin Bette cover art
Idylls of the King cover art
Sentimental Education cover art
Adam Bede cover art
Light in August cover art
The Golden Bowl cover art
The Decameron cover art
Jezebel’s Daughter cover art
Oracle Bones cover art
Eugenie Grandet cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Great novel if you're interested in post-1864 Paris society, architecture and impressionist painting. so much if this illuminates the world that those artists captured.

Great novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating look at the origins of the big department stores in Paris, and the development of an economic and fashion system we're still in today. If that sounds dry, it isn't: Zola is first and foremost concerned with the human beings who built this huge commercial machine, and the ones trapped in it. The narrator is perfect for the story, bringing out the humor in many places, and making a long book go, in the end, far too quickly.

Absorbing, multi-layered story and excellent narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A long deeply descriptive detail of the birth of the one stop Department store and its impact on society, traditional small retail businesses and general employment practices.

Like Tolstoy, Zola is known for his long, sweeping descriptive prose. Zola paints his background of detailed aspects of life in mid 19th century France and the Industrial and commercial revolution.
Often set within a story of human nature, strife, exploitation, love and tragedy.

The Paradise is long on description, perhaps too much for my liking and less plot and story driven.
A good social commentary on the evolution in the retail trade but not the best novel in the RM series.

Phenomenal social commentary. Not his best novel.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Written at a time before motion pictures, before the department store was a common shopping mall feature, the detailed description of every aspect of this magnificent enterprise would’ve captivated any reader. To appreciate this book from a modern vantage point, I think one needs to embrace the now much unnecessary detail with patience, like appreciating the brush strokes of a fine painting. The story itself and character development is equally meticulous and thus slow, but the careful layers create depth that is often otherwise lacking in modern stories. I enjoyed this on Audible; probably would’ve struggled to have found time to read the entirety in print.

An account as entrancing as its subject

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.