"Unsurpassable...heroically big...the intensity of her creator's vision...of the dense sordid life...is one of the great things the modern novel has been able to do."--Henry James

"The Gin Palace delighted me...full of color, movement, and life."--Anatole France

"A born writer, marvelously gifted."--Guy de Maupassant

The Gin Palace is the seventh novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, about two branches of a French family traced through several generations. Introducing one of the most sympathetic heroines in nineteenth-century literature, it is also the work that made his reputation.

Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of Monsieur Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected appearance of a figure from her past, Gervaise's plans begin to unravel tragically.