Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, playwright and journalist, and the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism. He was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 known collectively as Les Rougon-Macquart, examining two branches of a family - the respectable Rougons and the disreputable Macquarts - over five generations. This novel, the 10th in the series first published in book form in the original French in 1883 having previously been serialised in the periodical Le Gaulois from January to April 1882, is set in a Parisian apartment building, a relatively new housing arrangement at the time it was written, and the title which can be roughly translated as 'stew pot' reflects what lurks behind the building's facade as the lives of the inhabitants are revealed. Reprinted from an English translation of 1887 which includes 15 full-page illustrations.