Penguin Random House Secondary Education
Elementary Secondary Higher Ed

Secondary Education Inspire Teaching and Learning with Outstanding Books


Guides

Collections

News
(0)
Wish List
(0)
Wish List
  • Secondary Education

    Inspire Teaching and Learning with Outstanding Books

    • English Language Arts
        • English Language Arts
        • Genre: Fiction
        • Genre: Nonfiction
        • Genre: Drama
        • Genre: Poetry
        • Genre: Literary Criticism
        •  
        • Literature: American
        • Literature: British & Commonwealth
        • Literature: Comparative & World
        •  
        • Communication
        • Writing & Composition
        • ESL / ELL

        • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • Social Studies & History
        • Social Studies
        • Anthropology
        • Civics & Government
        • Economics, Business, and Finance
        • Geography
        • Philosophy & Ethics
        • Psychology
        • Sociology
        • History
        • European History
        • Historiography
        • Topical History
        • United States History
        • Wars, Conflicts, and Events
        • World History

        • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • STEAM / STEM
        • Science
        • Applied Sciences
        • Astronomy
        • Biology & Life Sciences
        • Earth Science
        • Engineering
        • Environmental Science & Issues
        • Essays
        • Experiments, Projects, and Makerspace
        • History of Science
        • Physical Science
        • References
        • Research & Methodology
        • Scientists, Inventors, & Discoveries
        • The Arts
        • Architecture
        • Art
        • Fashion
        • Media Studies
        • Music
        • Performing Arts
        • Math
        • Algebra
        • Arithmetic
        • Calculus
        • Geometry
        • Precalculus
        • Probability & Statistics
        • Quantitative Reasoning
        • More Math…
        • Computer & IT
        • Artificial Intelligence
        • Coding & Programming
        • Computer Education
        • Computer Science Principles
        • Cyber Security
        • Design & User Experience (UX)
        • Entertainment & Games
        • Ethics
        • History of IT
        • Internet / The Web
        • Networking
        • Operating Systems
        • Software Manuals
        • More Computers & IT…

        • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • Books in Spanish & World Languages
        • Books in Spanish & World Languages
        • Books in Spanish
        • World Languages

        • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • Study Aids & Exam Prep
        • Study Aids & Exam Prep
        • College Entrance Exams
        • High School Exams

        • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • More Disciplines
        • Health, Sports, Games, and Crafts
        • Cooking & Nutrition
        • Crafts & Makerspace
        • Games & Activities
        • Health & Wellness
        • Physical Education
        • Religious Studies & Spirituality
        • Agnostic & Atheist
        • Buddhism
        • Christianity
        • Comparative Religion
        • Confucianism
        • Hindu
        • Islam
        • Judaism
        • Notable People in Religious Studies & Spirituality
        • Taoism
        • Visionary & Metaphysical
        • Education & Professional Learning
        • Child and Adolescent Development
        • Classroom Management
        • Counseling
        • Pedagogy & Methodology
        • Schools and Education
        • Special Education
        • References
        • Almanacs
        • Atlases, Gazetteers, and Maps
        • Bibliographies & Indexes
        • Dictionaries
        • Encyclopedias
        • Research Materials
        • Style Manuals
        • Thesauruses
        • Word Lists
        • Writing Skills

          • Browse All Subjects and Topics
    • Guides
    • Collections
    • News
    • Other Penguin Random House Education Sites
    • Elementary Ed
    • Higher Ed
Download high-resolution image Look inside

The Belly of Paris

Part of Modern Library Classics

Author Emile Zola
Translated by Mark Kurlansky
Look inside
Paperback
$16.00 US
Random House Group | Modern Library
5.3"W x 8"H x 0.8"D  
On sale May 12, 2009 | 368 Pages | 978-0-8129-7422-5
| Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies
  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Lifestyles > City & Town Life
  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > People & Places by Region > Europe
  • English Language Arts > Literature: Comparative & World > Pre-20th Century
  • About
  • Author
  • Excerpt
  • Praise
Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point.

Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.
Emile Zola (1840—1902) was born in Paris and worked as a journalist before turning to fiction. With the publication of L’Assommoir, he became the most famous writer in France. His work has influenced authors from August Strindberg to Theodore Dreiser to Tom Wolfe. Zola was nominated for the first two Nobel Prizes in Literature. View titles by Emile Zola
Chapter One



In the silence of a deserted avenue, wagons stuffed with produce made their way toward Paris, their thudding wheels rhythmically echoing off the houses sleeping behind the rows of elm trees meandering on either side of the road. At the pont de Neuilly, a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas met up with eight carts of turnips and carrots coming in from Nanterre. The horses, their heads bent low, led themselves with their lazy, steady pace, a bit slowed by the slight uphill climb. Up on the carts, lying on their stomachs in the vegetables, wrapped in their black-and-gray-striped wool coats, the drivers slept with the reins in their fists. Occasionally the light from a gas lamp would grope its way through the shadows and brighten the hobnail of a boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the tip of a hat poking from the bright bloom of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white bouquets of turnips, or the bursting greenery of peas and cabbages.

All along the road and all the nearby routes, up ahead and farther back, the distant rumbling of carts told of other huge wagons, all pushing on through the darkness and slumber of two in the morning, the sound of passing food lulling the darkened town to stay asleep.

Madame François’s horse, Balthazar, an overweight beast, led the column. He dawdled on, half asleep, flicking his ears until, at rue de Longchamp, his legs were suddenly frozen by fear. The other animals bumped their heads into the stalled carts in front of them, and the column halted with the clanking of metal and the cursing of drivers who had been yanked from their sleep. Seated up top, Madame François, with her back against a plank that held the vegetables in place, peered out but saw nothing by the faint light of the little square lantern to her left, which barely lit one of Balthazar’s glistening flanks.

“Come on, lady, let’s keep moving,” shouted one of the men who was kneeling in turnips. “It’s just some drunken idiot.”

But as she leaned over she thought she made out a dark patch of something blocking the road, about to be stepped on by the horse.

“You can’t just run people over,” she said, jumping down from her wagon.

It was a man sprawled across the road, his arms stretched out, facedown in the dust. He seemed extraordinarily long and as thin as a dry branch. It was a miracle that Balthazar had not stepped on him and snapped him in two. Madame François thought he was dead, but when she crouched over him and took his hand, she found it was still warm.

“Hey, mister,” she called softly.

But the drivers were growing impatient. The one kneeling in the vegetables shouted in a gruff voice, “Give it up, lady. The son of a bitch is plastered. Shove him in the gutter.”

In the meantime, the man had opened his eyes. He stared, motionless, at Madame François, with a look of bewilderment. She too thought that he must be drunk.

“You can’t stay there, you’re going to get yourself run over,” she told him. “Where were you going?”

“I don’t know,” the man replied in a feeble voice. Then, with great effort and a worried face, “I was going to Paris, and I fell. I don’t know . . .”

Now she could see him better, and he was pathetic with his black pants and black overcoat, so threadbare that they showed the contour of his bare bones. Underneath a hat of coarse black cloth that he had pulled down as though afraid of being recognized, two large brown eyes of a rare gentleness could be seen on a hard and tormented face. Madame François thought that this man was much too feeble to have been drinking.

“Where in Paris were you going?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. This cross-examination was worrying him. After a moment’s reflection, he cautiously replied, “Over there, by Les Halles.”

With great difficulty he had almost stood up again and seemed anxious to be on his way. But Madame François noticed him trying to steady himself against one of the wagon shafts.

“You’re tired?”

“Very tired,” he mumbled.

Adopting a gruff tone, as though annoyed, and giving him a shove, she shouted, “Go on, move it! Get up in my wagon! You’re wasting my time. I’m going to Les Halles, and I can drop you off with my vegetables.”

When he refused, she practically threw him onto the turnips and carrots in the back with her thick arms and shouted impatiently, “That’s enough! No more trouble from you. You’re beginning to annoy me, my friend. Didn’t I tell you that I’m headed to the market anyway? Go to sleep up there. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

She climbed back up, sat sideways with her back against the plank again, and took Balthazar’s reins. He started up sleepily, twitching his ears. The other carts followed. The column resumed its slow march in the dark, the sound of wheels on the paving stones again thudding against the sleeping housefronts. The wagoneers, wrapped in their coats, returned to their snoozing. The one who had called out to Madame François grumbled as he lay down, “Damn, does she have to take care of every bum? You are something, lady.”

The carts rolled on, the horses, with their heads bowed, leading themselves. The man Madame François had picked up was lying on his stomach, his long legs lost in the turnips, which filled the back of the cart, while his head was buried in the spreading carrot bunches. With weary outstretched arms he seemed to hug his bed of vegetables for fear a jolt of the cart would send him sprawling in the road. He watched the two endless columns of gaslights ahead of him, which vanished in the distance into a confusion of other lights. A large white cloud nuzzled the horizon, so that Paris appeared to be sleeping in a glowing mist illuminated by all the lamps.

“I’m from Nanterre. My name is Madame François,” the woman said after a moment’s silence. “Ever since I lost my poor husband, I go to Les Halles every morning. It’s a hard life, but what can you do. And you?”

“My name is Florent, I come from far away,” the stranger replied awkwardly. “I’m really sorry, but I’m so exhausted that it’s hard to talk.”

He did not want to say any more, so Madame François became silent too, letting the reins fall loosely on the back of Balthazar, who seemed to know every paving stone along the route.

In the meantime, Florent, staring at the broadening sparkle of Paris in the distance, contemplated the story that he had decided not to tell the woman. Sentenced to Cayenne1 for his involvement in the events of December,2 he had escaped to Dutch Guiana, where he had drifted for two years, filled with a passion to return to France but also afraid of the imperial police. He was about to enter the great city that he had so deeply missed and longed for. He told himself that he would hide there, returning to the peaceful existence he had once lived. The police knew nothing. Everyone would assume that he had died over there. He thought about his arrival at Le Havre, where he had landed with only fifteen francs hidden in the corner of a handkerchief. It had been enough for a coach to Rouen, but from there he had had to make his way on foot, having only thirty sous left. At Vernon he had spent his last two sous on bread. After that he couldn’t remember anything. He thought he had slept in a ditch for several hours, and he might have shown a policeman the papers with which he had supplied himself. But these images danced vaguely in his head. He had come all the way from Vernon with nothing to eat, accompanied by fits of anger and sudden despondency that had made him chew the leaves on the hedges he passed along the way. He had kept walking despite stomach cramps, his belly knotted, his vision blurred, his feet advancing, unconsciously drawn by the image of Paris, so far away, beyond the horizon, calling to him, waiting for him.

On a very dark night, he finally reached Courbevoie. Paris looked like a patch of starry sky that had fallen onto a blackened corner of the earth. It had a stern look, as though angered by Florent’s return. Then he felt faint, his wobbly legs almost collapsing as he walked down the hill. While crossing the pont de Neuilly, he supported himself, clinging to the stone railings, and leaned over to look at the inky waves of the rolling Seine between the thickly grown banks. A red signal lantern on the water followed him with its bloodshot eye. Now he had to pull himself up to climb to Paris at the top of the hill. But the boulevard seemed endless. The hundreds of leagues he had already traveled seemed as nothing compared to this. In this last stretch he was losing faith that he would ever reach the top of the hill with its crown of lights.

The flat boulevard stretched before him with its lines of tall trees and squat houses. Its wide grayish sidewalks were blotchy with the shadows of branches. The darkened gaps where the boulevard met the side streets were all in silence and shade. Only the stumpy little yellow flames of the gas lamps standing straight at regular intervals gave some life to this desolate wasteland. And Florent seemed to be making no progress, the boulevard growing longer and longer and carrying Paris away into the depths of the night. In time he began hallucinating that the gas lamps on both sides of him were running away, carrying the road off with them, until, completely losing his bearings, he fell on a pile of paving stones.

And now he was gently tossing and turning on his bed of vegetables, which felt more like a soft feather bed. He raised his head a little to watch the incandescent mist spread over the black silhouettes of the rooftops just visible along the horizon. He was approaching his destination, being carried there with nothing more to do than absorb the slow-motion bumps of the wagon, and, freed from the pain of fatigue, he now suffered only hunger. But his hunger was reawakened and becoming unbearable. His limbs had fallen asleep, and he could feel only his stomach, cramped and twisted as though by a red-hot iron. The ripe smell of vegetables that surrounded him, the piercing freshness of the carrots, made him almost faint.

With all his might he pushed his chest into this deep bed of food, trying to pull in his stomach as tightly as he could to suppress its loud rumblings. Behind him, the nine other wagons piled high with cabbages, mountains of peas, heaps of artichokes, lettuce, celery, and leeks, seemed to be slowly gaining on him as though to overtake him as he was racked with starvation and bury him in an avalanche of food.

They came to a stop, and deep voices could be heard. It was customs inspectors examining the wagons. And so Florent, his teeth clenched, at last entered Paris, passed out on a pile of carrots.

“Hey, you up there!” Madame François abruptly shouted. As he didn’t move, she climbed up and shook him. Florent propped himself up. As he had slept, the hunger pains had stopped, but he was disoriented.

The woman made him get down, saying, “Can you help me unload?”

He helped her.

A heavyset man with a walking stick and a felt hat, with a badge on the left lapel of his coat, was growing angry and tapping the tip of his stick on the sidewalk. “Come on, come on, faster than that. How many meters do you have there? Four, isn’t it?”

He gave Madame François a ticket, and she took a large coin out of her canvas bag. He moved on to vent his anger and tap the tip of his stick farther down the line. The market woman took Balthazar by the bridle and backed him up until the wagon wheels were against the curb. Then she opened the back of the wagon, marked off her four meters of curb with pieces of straw, and asked Florent to start passing the vegetables down. She arranged them in her alotted space with an artistic flair, so that the tops formed a green wreath around the bunches. She arranged the display with dazzling speed in the dank morning light that made it resemble a tapestry with geometric splashes of color.
Copyright © 2009 by Emile Zola. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
"‘In an age when gastronomic fiction has become fashionable,’ Emile Zola's 1873 novel The Belly of Paris... ‘seems ahead of its time,’ writes food historian Mark Kurlansky in the introduction to his new translation of the book. Set amid the bustling Les Halles market, the novel ‘revolves around the graphically illustrated conceit that the bourgeoisie not only eats too much but has an unhealthy obsession with food.’ Its descriptions of cuisine, too, are notable for their length, detail and humor.”—Washington Post

“It’s totally appropriate that food-writer Mark Kurlansky should helm Modern Library Classics’ new translation of Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris. Not only does he have a keen ear for Zola’s revolutionary naturalism, he also captures the passion at the heart (or gut) of The Belly of Paris–a passion for food." —Biblioklept

About

Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point.

Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.

Author

Emile Zola (1840—1902) was born in Paris and worked as a journalist before turning to fiction. With the publication of L’Assommoir, he became the most famous writer in France. His work has influenced authors from August Strindberg to Theodore Dreiser to Tom Wolfe. Zola was nominated for the first two Nobel Prizes in Literature. View titles by Emile Zola

Excerpt

Chapter One



In the silence of a deserted avenue, wagons stuffed with produce made their way toward Paris, their thudding wheels rhythmically echoing off the houses sleeping behind the rows of elm trees meandering on either side of the road. At the pont de Neuilly, a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas met up with eight carts of turnips and carrots coming in from Nanterre. The horses, their heads bent low, led themselves with their lazy, steady pace, a bit slowed by the slight uphill climb. Up on the carts, lying on their stomachs in the vegetables, wrapped in their black-and-gray-striped wool coats, the drivers slept with the reins in their fists. Occasionally the light from a gas lamp would grope its way through the shadows and brighten the hobnail of a boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the tip of a hat poking from the bright bloom of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white bouquets of turnips, or the bursting greenery of peas and cabbages.

All along the road and all the nearby routes, up ahead and farther back, the distant rumbling of carts told of other huge wagons, all pushing on through the darkness and slumber of two in the morning, the sound of passing food lulling the darkened town to stay asleep.

Madame François’s horse, Balthazar, an overweight beast, led the column. He dawdled on, half asleep, flicking his ears until, at rue de Longchamp, his legs were suddenly frozen by fear. The other animals bumped their heads into the stalled carts in front of them, and the column halted with the clanking of metal and the cursing of drivers who had been yanked from their sleep. Seated up top, Madame François, with her back against a plank that held the vegetables in place, peered out but saw nothing by the faint light of the little square lantern to her left, which barely lit one of Balthazar’s glistening flanks.

“Come on, lady, let’s keep moving,” shouted one of the men who was kneeling in turnips. “It’s just some drunken idiot.”

But as she leaned over she thought she made out a dark patch of something blocking the road, about to be stepped on by the horse.

“You can’t just run people over,” she said, jumping down from her wagon.

It was a man sprawled across the road, his arms stretched out, facedown in the dust. He seemed extraordinarily long and as thin as a dry branch. It was a miracle that Balthazar had not stepped on him and snapped him in two. Madame François thought he was dead, but when she crouched over him and took his hand, she found it was still warm.

“Hey, mister,” she called softly.

But the drivers were growing impatient. The one kneeling in the vegetables shouted in a gruff voice, “Give it up, lady. The son of a bitch is plastered. Shove him in the gutter.”

In the meantime, the man had opened his eyes. He stared, motionless, at Madame François, with a look of bewilderment. She too thought that he must be drunk.

“You can’t stay there, you’re going to get yourself run over,” she told him. “Where were you going?”

“I don’t know,” the man replied in a feeble voice. Then, with great effort and a worried face, “I was going to Paris, and I fell. I don’t know . . .”

Now she could see him better, and he was pathetic with his black pants and black overcoat, so threadbare that they showed the contour of his bare bones. Underneath a hat of coarse black cloth that he had pulled down as though afraid of being recognized, two large brown eyes of a rare gentleness could be seen on a hard and tormented face. Madame François thought that this man was much too feeble to have been drinking.

“Where in Paris were you going?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. This cross-examination was worrying him. After a moment’s reflection, he cautiously replied, “Over there, by Les Halles.”

With great difficulty he had almost stood up again and seemed anxious to be on his way. But Madame François noticed him trying to steady himself against one of the wagon shafts.

“You’re tired?”

“Very tired,” he mumbled.

Adopting a gruff tone, as though annoyed, and giving him a shove, she shouted, “Go on, move it! Get up in my wagon! You’re wasting my time. I’m going to Les Halles, and I can drop you off with my vegetables.”

When he refused, she practically threw him onto the turnips and carrots in the back with her thick arms and shouted impatiently, “That’s enough! No more trouble from you. You’re beginning to annoy me, my friend. Didn’t I tell you that I’m headed to the market anyway? Go to sleep up there. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

She climbed back up, sat sideways with her back against the plank again, and took Balthazar’s reins. He started up sleepily, twitching his ears. The other carts followed. The column resumed its slow march in the dark, the sound of wheels on the paving stones again thudding against the sleeping housefronts. The wagoneers, wrapped in their coats, returned to their snoozing. The one who had called out to Madame François grumbled as he lay down, “Damn, does she have to take care of every bum? You are something, lady.”

The carts rolled on, the horses, with their heads bowed, leading themselves. The man Madame François had picked up was lying on his stomach, his long legs lost in the turnips, which filled the back of the cart, while his head was buried in the spreading carrot bunches. With weary outstretched arms he seemed to hug his bed of vegetables for fear a jolt of the cart would send him sprawling in the road. He watched the two endless columns of gaslights ahead of him, which vanished in the distance into a confusion of other lights. A large white cloud nuzzled the horizon, so that Paris appeared to be sleeping in a glowing mist illuminated by all the lamps.

“I’m from Nanterre. My name is Madame François,” the woman said after a moment’s silence. “Ever since I lost my poor husband, I go to Les Halles every morning. It’s a hard life, but what can you do. And you?”

“My name is Florent, I come from far away,” the stranger replied awkwardly. “I’m really sorry, but I’m so exhausted that it’s hard to talk.”

He did not want to say any more, so Madame François became silent too, letting the reins fall loosely on the back of Balthazar, who seemed to know every paving stone along the route.

In the meantime, Florent, staring at the broadening sparkle of Paris in the distance, contemplated the story that he had decided not to tell the woman. Sentenced to Cayenne1 for his involvement in the events of December,2 he had escaped to Dutch Guiana, where he had drifted for two years, filled with a passion to return to France but also afraid of the imperial police. He was about to enter the great city that he had so deeply missed and longed for. He told himself that he would hide there, returning to the peaceful existence he had once lived. The police knew nothing. Everyone would assume that he had died over there. He thought about his arrival at Le Havre, where he had landed with only fifteen francs hidden in the corner of a handkerchief. It had been enough for a coach to Rouen, but from there he had had to make his way on foot, having only thirty sous left. At Vernon he had spent his last two sous on bread. After that he couldn’t remember anything. He thought he had slept in a ditch for several hours, and he might have shown a policeman the papers with which he had supplied himself. But these images danced vaguely in his head. He had come all the way from Vernon with nothing to eat, accompanied by fits of anger and sudden despondency that had made him chew the leaves on the hedges he passed along the way. He had kept walking despite stomach cramps, his belly knotted, his vision blurred, his feet advancing, unconsciously drawn by the image of Paris, so far away, beyond the horizon, calling to him, waiting for him.

On a very dark night, he finally reached Courbevoie. Paris looked like a patch of starry sky that had fallen onto a blackened corner of the earth. It had a stern look, as though angered by Florent’s return. Then he felt faint, his wobbly legs almost collapsing as he walked down the hill. While crossing the pont de Neuilly, he supported himself, clinging to the stone railings, and leaned over to look at the inky waves of the rolling Seine between the thickly grown banks. A red signal lantern on the water followed him with its bloodshot eye. Now he had to pull himself up to climb to Paris at the top of the hill. But the boulevard seemed endless. The hundreds of leagues he had already traveled seemed as nothing compared to this. In this last stretch he was losing faith that he would ever reach the top of the hill with its crown of lights.

The flat boulevard stretched before him with its lines of tall trees and squat houses. Its wide grayish sidewalks were blotchy with the shadows of branches. The darkened gaps where the boulevard met the side streets were all in silence and shade. Only the stumpy little yellow flames of the gas lamps standing straight at regular intervals gave some life to this desolate wasteland. And Florent seemed to be making no progress, the boulevard growing longer and longer and carrying Paris away into the depths of the night. In time he began hallucinating that the gas lamps on both sides of him were running away, carrying the road off with them, until, completely losing his bearings, he fell on a pile of paving stones.

And now he was gently tossing and turning on his bed of vegetables, which felt more like a soft feather bed. He raised his head a little to watch the incandescent mist spread over the black silhouettes of the rooftops just visible along the horizon. He was approaching his destination, being carried there with nothing more to do than absorb the slow-motion bumps of the wagon, and, freed from the pain of fatigue, he now suffered only hunger. But his hunger was reawakened and becoming unbearable. His limbs had fallen asleep, and he could feel only his stomach, cramped and twisted as though by a red-hot iron. The ripe smell of vegetables that surrounded him, the piercing freshness of the carrots, made him almost faint.

With all his might he pushed his chest into this deep bed of food, trying to pull in his stomach as tightly as he could to suppress its loud rumblings. Behind him, the nine other wagons piled high with cabbages, mountains of peas, heaps of artichokes, lettuce, celery, and leeks, seemed to be slowly gaining on him as though to overtake him as he was racked with starvation and bury him in an avalanche of food.

They came to a stop, and deep voices could be heard. It was customs inspectors examining the wagons. And so Florent, his teeth clenched, at last entered Paris, passed out on a pile of carrots.

“Hey, you up there!” Madame François abruptly shouted. As he didn’t move, she climbed up and shook him. Florent propped himself up. As he had slept, the hunger pains had stopped, but he was disoriented.

The woman made him get down, saying, “Can you help me unload?”

He helped her.

A heavyset man with a walking stick and a felt hat, with a badge on the left lapel of his coat, was growing angry and tapping the tip of his stick on the sidewalk. “Come on, come on, faster than that. How many meters do you have there? Four, isn’t it?”

He gave Madame François a ticket, and she took a large coin out of her canvas bag. He moved on to vent his anger and tap the tip of his stick farther down the line. The market woman took Balthazar by the bridle and backed him up until the wagon wheels were against the curb. Then she opened the back of the wagon, marked off her four meters of curb with pieces of straw, and asked Florent to start passing the vegetables down. She arranged them in her alotted space with an artistic flair, so that the tops formed a green wreath around the bunches. She arranged the display with dazzling speed in the dank morning light that made it resemble a tapestry with geometric splashes of color.
Copyright © 2009 by Emile Zola. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

"‘In an age when gastronomic fiction has become fashionable,’ Emile Zola's 1873 novel The Belly of Paris... ‘seems ahead of its time,’ writes food historian Mark Kurlansky in the introduction to his new translation of the book. Set amid the bustling Les Halles market, the novel ‘revolves around the graphically illustrated conceit that the bourgeoisie not only eats too much but has an unhealthy obsession with food.’ Its descriptions of cuisine, too, are notable for their length, detail and humor.”—Washington Post

“It’s totally appropriate that food-writer Mark Kurlansky should helm Modern Library Classics’ new translation of Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris. Not only does he have a keen ear for Zola’s revolutionary naturalism, he also captures the passion at the heart (or gut) of The Belly of Paris–a passion for food." —Biblioklept

Other books in this series

  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 07, 2021
  • The Voyage Out
    The Voyage Out
    Virginia Woolf
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 06, 2021
  • The Southern Woman
    The Southern Woman
    Selected Fiction
    Elizabeth Spencer
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2021
  • The Squatter and the Don
    The Squatter and the Don
    Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 02, 2021
  • Leaves of Grass
    Leaves of Grass
    Walt Whitman
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 28, 2019
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles
    The Mysterious Affair at Styles
    The First Hercule Poirot Mystery
    Agatha Christie
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 30, 2019
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The Dark Interval
    The Dark Interval
    Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 14, 2018
  • The Greek Plays
    The Greek Plays
    Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
    Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
    $25.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 05, 2017
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2016
  • Anne of Green Gables
    Anne of Green Gables
    L. M. Montgomery
    $19.99 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 25, 2014
  • The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    A Romance
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • The Metamorphosis
    The Metamorphosis
    Franz Kafka
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 26, 2013
  • Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Gustave Flaubert
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 13, 2013
  • The Essential Writings of Rousseau
    The Essential Writings of Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 26, 2013
  • The Essential Prose of John Milton
    The Essential Prose of John Milton
    John Milton
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 12, 2013
  • Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems
    Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems
    John Milton
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 04, 2012
  • King John & Henry VIII
    King John & Henry VIII
    William Shakespeare
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • Henry VI
    Henry VI
    Parts I, II, and III
    William Shakespeare
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • Pericles
    Pericles
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • The Adventures of Amir Hamza
    The Adventures of Amir Hamza
    Special abridged edition
    Ghalib Lakhnavi, Abdullah Bilgrami
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 14, 2012
  • The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    Introduction by Jean-Marc Hovasse
    Victor Hugo
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 07, 2012
  • Panorama
    Panorama
    A Novel
    H. G. Adler
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 10, 2012
  • Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens
    Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • All's Well That Ends Well
    All's Well That Ends Well
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • Cymbeline
    Cymbeline
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • The Comedy of Errors
    The Comedy of Errors
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Coriolanus
    Coriolanus
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • The Taming of the Shrew
    The Taming of the Shrew
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Richard II
    Richard II
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Troilus and Cressida
    Troilus and Cressida
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Ethics
    Ethics
    The Essential Writings
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 2010
  • The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    May 04, 2010
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    A Novel
    Mark Twain
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 06, 2010
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    Mark Twain
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 06, 2010
  • The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 10, 2009
  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    Charles Dickens
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Journey
    The Journey
    A Novel
    H. G. Adler
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 08, 2009
  • Othello
    Othello
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Romeo and Juliet
    Romeo and Juliet
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Henry IV, Part 1
    Henry IV, Part 1
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Henry IV, Part 2
    Henry IV, Part 2
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Les Misérables
    Les Misérables
    Victor Hugo
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 14, 2009
  • Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • The Sonnets and Other Poems
    The Sonnets and Other Poems
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    Charlotte Bronte
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • The Travels of Marco Polo
    The Travels of Marco Polo
    Introduction by Colin Thubron
    Marco Polo
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 21, 2008
  • The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson
    The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson
    James Weldon Johnson
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 21, 2008
  • Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost
    John Milton
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 09, 2008
  • Hamlet
    Hamlet
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • The Tempest
    The Tempest
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Richard III
    Richard III
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Love's Labour's Lost
    Love's Labour's Lost
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Georges
    Georges
    Alexandre Dumas
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 10, 2008
  • The Prince
    The Prince
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 05, 2008
  • Siddhartha
    Siddhartha
    Hermann Hesse
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 04, 2007
  • The Essential Feminist Reader
    The Essential Feminist Reader
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 18, 2007
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $9.95 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Life on the Mississippi
    Life on the Mississippi
    Mark Twain
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 29, 2007
  • The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
    The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 03, 2007
  • The Dhammapada
    The Dhammapada
    Verses on the Way
    Glenn Wallis, Buddha
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 09, 2007
  • The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
    The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
    Catherine the Great
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 13, 2006
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue
    The Murders in the Rue Morgue
    Edgar Allan Poe
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 23, 2006
  • The Gilded Age
    The Gilded Age
    Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 14, 2006
  • The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
    The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
    Giorgio Vasari
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 14, 2006
  • The American Transcendentalists
    The American Transcendentalists
    Essential Writings
    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 10, 2006
  • The Constitutional Convention
    The Constitutional Convention
    A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison
    James Madison, Edward J. Larson, Michael P. Winship
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2005
  • Candide
    Candide
    or, Optimism
    Voltaire
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 11, 2005
  • The Sport of the Gods
    The Sport of the Gods
    and Other Essential Writings
    Paul Laurence Dunbar
    $23.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 09, 2005
  • The Kill
    The Kill
    Emile Zola
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 12, 2005
  • The Wrong Side of Paris
    The Wrong Side of Paris
    Honoré de Balzac
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 12, 2005
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther
    The Sorrows of Young Werther
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    $10.95 US
    Paperback
    Feb 08, 2005
  • Essential Stories
    Essential Stories
    V. S. Pritchett
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 04, 2005
  • I Promise to Be Good
    I Promise to Be Good
    The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud
    Arthur Rimbaud
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 09, 2004
  • Peter Pan
    Peter Pan
    J.M. Barrie, F.D. Bedford
    $10.95 US
    Paperback
    Oct 12, 2004
  • The Haunted House
    The Haunted House
    Charles Dickens
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 12, 2004
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    Laurence Sterne
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 21, 2004
  • The Knight of Maison-Rouge
    The Knight of Maison-Rouge
    A Novel of Marie Antoinette
    Alexandre Dumas
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2004
  • Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings
    Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings
    Jefferson Davis
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 2004
  • The Book of Spies
    The Book of Spies
    An Anthology of Literary Espionage
    Anthony Burgess, John Steinbeck, Rebecca West, John le Carré
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 08, 2004
  • The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    And Other Plays
    Oscar Wilde
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 08, 2004
  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
    The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
    or, Gustavus Vassa, the African
    Olaudah Equiano
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2004
  • The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    Stendhal
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2004
  • Basic Writings of Existentialism
    Basic Writings of Existentialism
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 13, 2004
  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 07, 2021
  • The Voyage Out
    The Voyage Out
    Virginia Woolf
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 06, 2021
  • The Southern Woman
    The Southern Woman
    Selected Fiction
    Elizabeth Spencer
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2021
  • The Squatter and the Don
    The Squatter and the Don
    Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 02, 2021
  • Leaves of Grass
    Leaves of Grass
    Walt Whitman
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 28, 2019
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles
    The Mysterious Affair at Styles
    The First Hercule Poirot Mystery
    Agatha Christie
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 30, 2019
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The Dark Interval
    The Dark Interval
    Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 14, 2018
  • The Greek Plays
    The Greek Plays
    Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
    Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
    $25.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 05, 2017
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2016
  • Anne of Green Gables
    Anne of Green Gables
    L. M. Montgomery
    $19.99 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 25, 2014
  • The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    A Romance
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • The Metamorphosis
    The Metamorphosis
    Franz Kafka
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 26, 2013
  • Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Gustave Flaubert
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 13, 2013
  • The Essential Writings of Rousseau
    The Essential Writings of Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 26, 2013
  • The Essential Prose of John Milton
    The Essential Prose of John Milton
    John Milton
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 12, 2013
  • Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems
    Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems
    John Milton
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 04, 2012
  • King John & Henry VIII
    King John & Henry VIII
    William Shakespeare
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • Henry VI
    Henry VI
    Parts I, II, and III
    William Shakespeare
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • Pericles
    Pericles
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 10, 2012
  • The Adventures of Amir Hamza
    The Adventures of Amir Hamza
    Special abridged edition
    Ghalib Lakhnavi, Abdullah Bilgrami
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 14, 2012
  • The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    Introduction by Jean-Marc Hovasse
    Victor Hugo
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 07, 2012
  • Panorama
    Panorama
    A Novel
    H. G. Adler
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 10, 2012
  • Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens
    Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • All's Well That Ends Well
    All's Well That Ends Well
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • Cymbeline
    Cymbeline
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 13, 2011
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • The Comedy of Errors
    The Comedy of Errors
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Coriolanus
    Coriolanus
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 14, 2011
  • Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • The Taming of the Shrew
    The Taming of the Shrew
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Richard II
    Richard II
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Troilus and Cressida
    Troilus and Cressida
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2010
  • Ethics
    Ethics
    The Essential Writings
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 2010
  • The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    May 04, 2010
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    A Novel
    Mark Twain
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 06, 2010
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    Mark Twain
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 06, 2010
  • The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 10, 2009
  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    Charles Dickens
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Journey
    The Journey
    A Novel
    H. G. Adler
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 08, 2009
  • Othello
    Othello
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Romeo and Juliet
    Romeo and Juliet
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Henry IV, Part 1
    Henry IV, Part 1
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Henry IV, Part 2
    Henry IV, Part 2
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 25, 2009
  • Les Misérables
    Les Misérables
    Victor Hugo
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 14, 2009
  • Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • The Sonnets and Other Poems
    The Sonnets and Other Poems
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 14, 2009
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    Charlotte Bronte
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • The Travels of Marco Polo
    The Travels of Marco Polo
    Introduction by Colin Thubron
    Marco Polo
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 21, 2008
  • The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson
    The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson
    James Weldon Johnson
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 21, 2008
  • Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost
    John Milton
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 09, 2008
  • Hamlet
    Hamlet
    William Shakespeare
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • The Tempest
    The Tempest
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Richard III
    Richard III
    William Shakespeare
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Love's Labour's Lost
    Love's Labour's Lost
    William Shakespeare
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 12, 2008
  • Georges
    Georges
    Alexandre Dumas
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 10, 2008
  • The Prince
    The Prince
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 05, 2008
  • Siddhartha
    Siddhartha
    Hermann Hesse
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 04, 2007
  • The Essential Feminist Reader
    The Essential Feminist Reader
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 18, 2007
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $9.95 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Life on the Mississippi
    Life on the Mississippi
    Mark Twain
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 29, 2007
  • The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
    The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 03, 2007
  • The Dhammapada
    The Dhammapada
    Verses on the Way
    Glenn Wallis, Buddha
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 09, 2007
  • The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
    The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
    Catherine the Great
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 13, 2006
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue
    The Murders in the Rue Morgue
    Edgar Allan Poe
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    May 23, 2006
  • The Gilded Age
    The Gilded Age
    Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 14, 2006
  • The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
    The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
    Giorgio Vasari
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 14, 2006
  • The American Transcendentalists
    The American Transcendentalists
    Essential Writings
    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller
    $20.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 10, 2006
  • The Constitutional Convention
    The Constitutional Convention
    A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison
    James Madison, Edward J. Larson, Michael P. Winship
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2005
  • Candide
    Candide
    or, Optimism
    Voltaire
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 11, 2005
  • The Sport of the Gods
    The Sport of the Gods
    and Other Essential Writings
    Paul Laurence Dunbar
    $23.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 09, 2005
  • The Kill
    The Kill
    Emile Zola
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 12, 2005
  • The Wrong Side of Paris
    The Wrong Side of Paris
    Honoré de Balzac
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 12, 2005
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther
    The Sorrows of Young Werther
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    $10.95 US
    Paperback
    Feb 08, 2005
  • Essential Stories
    Essential Stories
    V. S. Pritchett
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 04, 2005
  • I Promise to Be Good
    I Promise to Be Good
    The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud
    Arthur Rimbaud
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 09, 2004
  • Peter Pan
    Peter Pan
    J.M. Barrie, F.D. Bedford
    $10.95 US
    Paperback
    Oct 12, 2004
  • The Haunted House
    The Haunted House
    Charles Dickens
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 12, 2004
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    Laurence Sterne
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 21, 2004
  • The Knight of Maison-Rouge
    The Knight of Maison-Rouge
    A Novel of Marie Antoinette
    Alexandre Dumas
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 14, 2004
  • Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings
    Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings
    Jefferson Davis
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 2004
  • The Book of Spies
    The Book of Spies
    An Anthology of Literary Espionage
    Anthony Burgess, John Steinbeck, Rebecca West, John le Carré
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 08, 2004
  • The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    And Other Plays
    Oscar Wilde
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 08, 2004
  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
    The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
    or, Gustavus Vassa, the African
    Olaudah Equiano
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2004
  • The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    Stendhal
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    May 11, 2004
  • Basic Writings of Existentialism
    Basic Writings of Existentialism
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 13, 2004
Related Articles
General Education & Professional Learning English Language Arts Favorite Authors & Series References Science Social Studies The Arts History High School Middle School Graphic Novels Classroom Libraries Translanguaging Collections
April 19 2022

NEW! PRH Education Translanguaging Collections

Translanguaging is a communicative practice of bilinguals and multilinguals, that is, it is a practice whereby bilinguals and multilinguals use their entire linguistic repertoire to communicate and make meaning (García, 2009; García, Ibarra Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017)   It is through that lens that we have partnered with teacher educators and bilingual education experts, Drs.

Read more

NEW! PRH Education Translanguaging Collections

General Education & Professional Learning English Language Arts Favorite Authors & Series References Science Social Studies The Arts History High School Middle School Graphic Novels Classroom Libraries Translanguaging Collections
April 19 2022
General English Language Arts Favorite Authors & Series References Science Social Studies The Arts History Middle School Graphic Novels Classroom Libraries Environmental Science
October 22 2020

PRH Education Classroom Libraries

“Books are a students’ passport to entering and actively participating in a global society with the empathy, compassion, and knowledge it takes to become the problem solvers the world needs.” –Laura Robb   Research shows that reading and literacy directly impacts students’ academic success and personal growth. To help promote the importance of daily independent

Read more

PRH Education Classroom Libraries

General English Language Arts Favorite Authors & Series References Science Social Studies The Arts History Middle School Graphic Novels Classroom Libraries Environmental Science
October 22 2020
Connect with Us!

Get the latest news on all things Secondary Education. Learn about our books, authors, teacher events, and more!

Friend us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Subscribe on YouTube

View us on Pinterest

Our mission is to foster a universal passion for reading by partnering with authors to help create stories and communicate ideas that inform, entertain, and inspire.

Privacy Policy   |   Terms of Use

© 2022 Penguin Random House

About Secondary Education

  • About Us
  • FAQ
  • Conferences
  • Contact your PreK-12 Representative
  • Browse & subscribe to our newsletters

Penguin Random House Education

  • Elementary
  • Secondary
  • Higher Ed
  • Common Reads

Penguin Random House

  • PenguinRandomHouse.com
  • global.PenguinRandomHouse.com
  • Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau

About Secondary Education

  • About Us
  • FAQ
  • Conferences

Penguin Random House Education

  • Elementary
  • Secondary
  • Higher Ed
  • Common Reads
  • Contact your PreK-12 Representative
  • Browse & subscribe to our newsletters

Penguin Random House

  • PenguinRandomHouse.com
  • global.PenguinRandomHouse.com
  • Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau

Privacy Policy   |   Terms of Use

© 2022 Penguin Random House
Back to Top