Reading Order
NanaNana Reading Order
Nana (1880) by Émile Zola is the ninth novel in the twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart cycle — a portrait of the courtesan Anna Coupeau ('Nana'), daughter of the laundress Gervaise from L'Assommoir, who rises from slum poverty to become the most celebrated demi-mondaine of Second Empire Paris, destroying a series of aristocratic men who give her fortunes in exchange for her pleasure, before dying of smallpox in a hotel room as the crowds outside shout 'To Berlin!' at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The novel is Zola's most sustained study of desire, corruption, and the degradation of the bourgeoisie under the Second Empire — Nana's body is explicitly figured as a symbol of the decadence that will produce the catastrophe of 1870; but Nana herself is also one of the most complex and sympathetic female characters in the Naturalist tradition.
Where to start
L'Assommoir (1877) — introduces Gervaise, Nana's mother, before Nana; or start directly with Nana
Complete Nana Book List
Nana — Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read L'Assommoir before Nana?
No — Nana works completely as a standalone novel; the backstory of her mother Gervaise in L'Assommoir is referenced but fully explained. However, L'Assommoir is Zola's greatest individual novel, and reading both together gives you the full arc of Gervaise's family across two generations — the laundress's degradation and her daughter's spectacular and equally destructive rise.
What is the Rougon-Macquart cycle?
Zola's twenty-novel naturalist series (1871-1893) traces the hereditary and environmental influences on two branches of a French family — the Rougons (legitimate, bourgeois) and the Macquarts (illegitimate, working-class) — across the Second Empire period (1851-1870). Each novel focuses on a different social milieu; the most famous are L'Assommoir (the laundry/working-class world), Nana (the demi-monde), Germinal (the coal mines), and Zola's masterwork, which is variously cited as any of these three.
What is Nana's symbolic role in the novel?
Zola explicitly figures Nana's body as a symbol of the corruption eating at the Second Empire — the aristocratic and bourgeois men who give her their fortunes represent the French ruling class's decadence; when they are destroyed by desire for her, it prefigures the military and political catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian War. But Zola never lets the symbolism flatten Nana into a mere symbol — her survival instinct, her moments of genuine feeling, and her horrifying death are all presented with naturalist particularity.
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