The first in the huge cycle of novels about this family and their antecedents. Thematically, this is the end of republicanism and romanticism and the very shallow triumph of the peasant bourgeois that become the 2nd empire in 1851.
It centres on the Rougon- Macquart family, essentially some fairly vicious and stupid (if cunning) peasants in a small provincial town in Provence (Plassons).
The family triumph in a complex and burlesque deception over the existing bourgeois of the town and the vile Pierre ends up as the town’s tax collector, a real sinecure. This establishes their power.
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