The Mysteries of Marseille

Marseille, 1845. When Blanche de Cazalis, ward of one of the city's most powerful men, falls in love with Philippe Cayol, a young man with neither fortune nor family name, she sets in motion a chain of events that will consume two families and nearly bring down a city. Her uncle, Monsieur de Cazalis, will not forgive the insult to his name - or risk his hold on his niece's fortune. He turns the full weight of his influence against Philippe, dragging him before a courtroom on a trumped-up charge, while Philippe's devoted brother Marius and a fierce young flower-seller named Fine fight in the shadows to save him. What begins as a private war of love and vengeance is soon swallowed by history itself, as Marseille erupts into the barricades and gunfire of the 1848 revolution, and, a year later, into the silent horror of a cholera epidemic that empties its streets. Written by a twenty-seven-year-old Émile Zola for a Marseille newspaper, years before he conceived the Rougon-Macquart novels that would make him one of France's greatest writers, The Mysteries of Marseille is a fast, full-blooded tale of forbidden love, family cruelty, and revolution - and an early glimpse of the unflinching social eye that would define an entire literary movement. Newly translated into English. >Her uncle, Monsieur de Cazalis, will not forgive the insult to his name - or risk his hold on his niece's fortune. He turns the full weight of his influence against Philippe, dragging him before a courtroom on a trumped-up charge, while Philippe's devoted brother Marius and a fierce young flower-seller named Fine fight in the shadows to save him. What begins as a private war of love and vengeance is soon swallowed by history itself, as Marseille erupts into the barricades and gunfire of the 1848 revolution, and, a year later, into the silent horror of a cholera epidemic that empties its streets. Written by a twenty-seven-year-old Émile Zola for a Marseille newspaper, years before he conceived the Rougon-Macquart novels that would make him one of France's greatest writers, The Mysteries of Marseille is a fast, full-blooded tale of forbidden love, family cruelty, and revolution - and an early glimpse of the unflinching social eye that would define an entire literary movement.