Few writers have been -- simultaneously -- political hero, intellectual master, and literary giant. But Emile Zola (1840-1902) was. His monumental cycle of twenty novels extended the reach of fiction for all subsequent generations; he gave new meaning to the cause of brave progressivism; and his work sparked into life what we think of as the modern intelligentsia. This magisterial biography of a great but strangely private and unknown man is also a superb history of the social, political, and intellectual world through which Zola traveled so unforgettably. - Jacket flap.