Germinal

Germinal is a novel written by Émile Zola and first published in 1885.

The novel portrays the hard life of a group of workers who work in a group of mines, focusing the story especially on the mine of La Voreaux.

The workers suffer very harsh conditions, where abuse and exploitation by the owners of the means of production is constant. They become rich at the cost of their pain and misery.

The novel presents a large number of characters and each one has his or her importance in the story. It is a hard novel that shows the misery of man and the suffocation of a people when it is abused.

"Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometres in length, intersecting the beetroot fields."

This edition of the book Germinal by Émile Zola is based on the English translation by Havelock Ellis.