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. Fifteen years in the making, Zola draws on the new edition of Zola's letters, with its hundreds of new documents, to offer unprecedented detail and nuance about Zola's life.