L'Assommoir

Regarded by critics as one of the highest pinnacles of achievement in Emile Zola's literary career, L'Assommoir (best translated as "e;the cheap liquor store"e;) offers an unflinching look at alcoholism among the working class in nineteenth-century France. Part of a larger, 20-volume story cycle that spanned Zola's entire career, L'Assommoir was the novel that initially propelled the writer to fam...