Ladies' Happiness

Left without means of existence, young Denise Bodiu is forced to take care of her brothers alone and brings them to Paris, hoping to find work and luck in the big city. Here, Denise gets a job at the store "Ladies' Happiness", a dazzling embodiment of an efficient and cynical approach to trade and advertising - new trends against which the doomed shopkeepers of the old school rebel. Gradually, sensible, kind, modest, and hardworking Denise makes new friends, achieves success, and unwittingly wins hearts - including the heart of Octave Mouret, the owner of "Ladies' Happiness", a womanizer and pragmatist to the core... Émile Zola is the greatest French naturalist writer, journalist, and one of the most significant figures in world literature of the second half of the 19th century; along with Ivan Turgenev, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, and Gustave Flaubert - a prominent representative of literary realism. No one else could paint reality as truthfully, with such fidelity to the truth and precision in conveying details. Zola's legacy laid the foundation for the further development of French literature, and his journalistic works taught numerous generations of journalists around the world. "Ladies' Happiness", Zola's most famous novel, a story about everyday labor, inevitable success, complicated love, and the inevitability of change, is published in a magnificent new translation.