☰Germinal

Zola's 1885 novel is set in the coal-mining communities of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, a short distance from Lille. It follows Étienne Lantier's arrival at a mining town, his radicalization among the workers, and the violent strike that follows. Germinal is the most powerful novel about industrial labour in French literature and the best way to understand the social history of the region that Lille dominated economically and culturally for two centuries. The landscape Zola describes — flat, black, defined by pit headgear — has largely disappeared, but its legacy is everywhere in the politics and identity of northern France.