Germinal

The political awakening of a migrant worker in northern France leads to a coal-mining strike in this masterpiece of nineteenth-century French literature.

Former railway worker Étienne Lantier has come to the bleak town of Montsou in search of work. Befriending a coal miner, he soon takes a job pushing carts into the Voreux mine. Though he finds a place of respect among his fellow workers, Lantier begins to see how unacceptable their life of poverty, illness, and hunger truly is. As his political idealism takes shape, he inspires a strike that will bring both suffering and hope to Montsou.

First published in 1885, Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s celebrated Les Rougon-Macquart sequence. It combines an uncompromising depiction of working conditions in northern France with an inspiring evocation of love, community, and the human spirit.