Emile Zola

The Fat and the Thin Emile Zola

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. Amidst the deep silence and solitude prevailing in the avenue several market gardeners' carts were climbing the slope which led towards Paris, and the fronts of the houses, asleep behind the dim lines of elms on either side of the road, echoed back the rhythmical jolting of the wheels.