Nana

Nana by Émile Zola (1880)

A beautiful, talentless actress rises from the Paris slums to become the most desired courtesan of the Second Empire, destroying every man who falls under her spell. Zola's explosive novel about sex, power, and the corruption of an empire.

Historical Significance:
Published in 1880, Nana was the ninth novel in Zola's twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle, which traced heredity and environment across five generations of two French families. Nana — daughter of the alcoholic washerwoman Gervaise from L'Assommoir — uses her sexuality as a weapon against the aristocratic society that created the poverty she was born into. The novel sold 55,000 copies on its first day, a record for French publishing. Zola's naturalistic method — researching his subjects with quasi-scientific thoroughness — made Nana both a literary sensation and a sociological document of Second Empire decadence.

This public domain classic was originally published in 1880. Free to read and share.