Germinal (Unabridged)

Written by Émile Zola

Narrated by Digital Voice Marcus G

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Descend into the suffocating depths of a French coal mine, where Etienne Lantier stumbles into a world of backbreaking labor, ruthless exploitation, and simmering discontent. Coal dust fills the air, wages are meager, and the ever-present threat of cave-ins looms large. As Etienne joins the miners' fight for a scrap of dignity, their struggle against the mine owners ignites, threatening to erupt in a fiery rebellion. Will they find a flicker of hope in the darkness, or will they be consumed by the relentless grip of Germinal – the month of seeds, but also the month of revolution?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Falcon Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9798868674075

Émile Zola

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.