Few concessions are made to the reader’s comfort in “Germinal”, Zola’s harsh and moving novel of a coalminers’ strike. Set in the north of France in the 1860s, it is the thirteenth of the twenty “Les Rougon-Macquart” novels and is often regarded as his most important. At over eight hundred pages it is long, though some readers who feared a dense book found it accessible and thought-provoking about society and human nature.

The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.

About the book

Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s – has been published and translated in over one hundred countries. It has also inspired five film adaptations and two television productions.

Description: Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Reading order · Les Rougon-Macquart

Full order & progress →

Where the score comes from

The sources average 8.1 across 117 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 44% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 7.9 comes out.