Short Stories

Nana, The Miller''s Daughter, Captain Burle, The Death of Olivier BecailleNana 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 Zola''s earlier novel Rougon-Macquart series, L''Assommoir (1877), 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.