Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was the perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana—the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L'Assommoir—is now rendered in racy, stylish English.
Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire. Nana first appeared near the end of L'Assommoir (1877), Zola's earlier novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, where she is the daughter of an abusive drunk. At the conclusion of that novel, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.
