Fruitfulness

Eines der skurrilsten Bücher, das ich je gelesen habe. 1899 geschrieben, die Geschichte eines Paares, das am 158 Kinder, Enkel und Urenkel in die Welt gesetzt hat und dessen Nachkommenschaft, nachdem sie ganz Paris und Umgebung dominiert, nun auch anschickt, Afrika zu besiedeln. Natürlich interessan......more

Emile Zola was a novelist as famous in France as his contemporary Charles Dickens was in the UK. He wrote novels about how social conditions, heredity, and environment were inescapable forces in shaping human character. He called this Naturalism, and his first major work, Thérèse Raquin, written in......more

Slow at times. Genius at times. I was a bit disappointed by Zola's seeming support of European imperialism in Africa at the end even though, for the most part, he keeps up with his theme of the necessity a socialist brotherhood. The curious thing about this novel is that Mathieu is Pierre Froment's......more

Un roman du fin XIXème siècle C’est probablement le roman le plus ancré dans la logique de son temps. L’auteur part avec une thèse à démontrer et il y arrive avec une narration plutôt manichéenne, où il balaye rapidement et d’une manière très naïve les réflexions sociétales et économiques, qui normal......more

Probably the most exhaustingly moralistic book I've ever read. Large swathes of the book are taken up by repetition of the same paeans to fertility, cultivating the land, and the "natural" harmony of things. Yet the book is not even that morally pure, with its rampant belief in colonialism (and colo......more