
Germinal
1885 · 546 pages
Etienne Lantier takes work in a French coal pit and talks the starving miners into striking. Zola went down a real mine to write this, and you feel the rock overhead.
★ 7.3

Etienne Lantier takes work in a French coal pit and talks the starving miners into striking. Zola went down a real mine to write this, and you feel the rock overhead.

Dying of throat cancer and ruined by a swindler, Grant set down the Mexican War and the Civil War in short exact sentences that never boast. He finished days before his death.

Hugo was the largest voice in French poetry, and the range astonishes: political fury from exile against Napoleon III, and “Demain, dès l'aube,” a walk that ends at his drowned daughter's grave.

Allan Quatermain, an aging elephant hunter, follows an old map into unmapped Africa and finds a lost kingdom ruled by a tyrant. Hidden-city adventure from Tarzan to Indiana Jones runs on Haggard's machinery.