The Complete Rougon-Macquart Cycle (All 20 Unabridged Novels in one volume)

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Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire , it follows the life of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire and is an example of French naturalism.
Table of Contents:
1.La Fortune des Rougon
2.La Curée
3.Le Ventre de Paris
4.La Conquête de Plassans
5.La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret
6.Son Excellence Eugène Rougon
7.L'Assommoir
8.Une Page d'amour
9.Nana
10.Pot-Bouille
11.Au Bonheur des Dames
12.La Joie de vivre
13.Germinal
14.L'Œuvre
15.La Terre
16.Le Rêve
17.La Bête humaine
18.L'Argent
19.La Débâcle
20.Le Docteur Pascal
The series began with La Fortune des Rougon , which introduces the Rougons and the Macquarts. Zola examines the impact of environment by varying the social, economic, and professional milieu in which each novel takes place. La Curée explores the land speculation and financial dealings that accompanied the renovation of Paris during the Second Empire. Le Ventre de Paris examines the structure of the Halles, the vast central marketplace of Paris. Son Excellence Eugène Rougon traces the machinations and maneuverings of cabinet officials in Napoleon III’s government.
L’Assommoir shows the effects of alcoholism in a working-class neighbourhood by focusing on the rise and decline of a laundress, Gervaise Macquart. Nana follows the life of Gervaise’s daughter as her economic circumstances and hereditary penchants lead her to a career as an actress, then a courtesan. Au Bonheur des dames depicts the mechanisms of a new economic entity, the department store, and its impact on smaller merchants.
Germinal depicts life in a mining community by highlighting relations between the bourgeoisie and the working class. A quite different work, L’Oeuvre , explores the milieu of the art world and the relationships among the arts through an examination of the friendship between an Impressionist painter, Claude Lantier, and a naturalist novelist, Pierre Sandoz.
In La Terre Zola depicts what he considered to be the sordid lust for land among the French peasantry. In La Bête humaine he analyzes the hereditary urge to kill that haunts the Lantier branch of the family. La Débâcle traces both the defeat of the French army by the Germans at the Battle of Sedan in 1870 and the anarchist uprising of the Paris Commune.