The Fortune of the Rougons Les Rougon-Macquart #1

The Fortune of the Rougons (French: La Fortune des Rougon), originally published in 1871, is the first novel in �mile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel is partly an origin story, with a huge cast of characters swarming around - many of whom become the central figures of later novels in the series - and partly an account of the December 1851 coup d'�tat that created the French Second Empire under Napoleon III as experienced in a large provincial town in southern France.