Nana

The year is 1867, the year of the Universal Exposition. While the City of Lights fills with a cosmopolitan elite strolling along its majestic boulevards, the tragic fate of Nana, the laundress's daughter from *La Tavern* and a provocatively beautiful courtesan who triumphs in the vaudeville theater, is that of the decadent bourgeoisie. This novel, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle and framed within the critique of fin-de-siècle hypocrisy and moral corruption that runs through Zola's work, earned, among others, the admiration of Flaubert: "Chapter XIV, unsurpassed...! Yes...! Almighty God...! Incomparable!..."