The Fat and the Thin is the third novel of Zola's twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The Fat and the Thin is a study of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart. She has become prosperous, and increasingly selfish. Her brother-in-law Florent has escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lives for a short time in her house, but she becomes tired of his presence and ultimately denounces him to the police. As a critic put it: "It also embraces a powerful allegory, the prose song of the eternal battle between the lean of this world and the fat -- a battle in which, as the author shows, the latter always come off successful."

Author Biography

Emile Edouard Charles Antoine Zola (1840 - 1902) was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'accuse. Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902. Ernest Alfred Vizetelly (1853-1922) was an English journalist and author. He was a son of the English publisher Henry Vizetelly, by his first marriage to Ellen Elizabeth Pollard. He was known as a war correspondent. Ernest republished some of his father's works by Emile Zola but modified them. Ernest was present with his father at the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and wrote a memoir of his experiences My Days of Adventure; the Fall of France, 1870-71 which also contains an autobiographical introduction.