Émile Zola: Asomuar 1

L’Assommoir, the first naturalist novel to portray poor people’s lives. Émile Zola’s great work, by a leading naturalist writer and engaged intellectual, is published by Minumsa as volumes 441 and 442 of its World Literature Collection. If Germinal is one of the first novels centered on a worker, L’Assommoir is the first to fully portray ordinary and poor people. Known in Korea as The Drinking Den, it follows Gervaise, whose modest dream is simply to work, eat, and have a place to sleep. The first half traces her rise from poverty and abandonment at the Boncoeur inn to becoming a laundry owner; the second follows her decline into poverty and alcoholism and a miserable death. The title is a bar at the corner of Boulevard de Rochechouart and Rue des Poissonniers in Paris. French assommoir derives from assommer, “to knock down,” and meant a club that could beat someone to death or exhausting work that could knock a person down.

Korean title: 아소무아르 1

Korean author: 에밀 졸라

Korean publisher: 민음사

ISBN-13: 9788937464416