The Fat and the Thin — Emile Zola

THE FAT AND THE THIN or to use the French title Le Ventre de Paris is a story of life in and around those vast Central Markets which form a distinctive feature of modern Paris Even the reader who has never crossed the Channel must have heard of the Parisian Halles for much has been written about them not only in English books on the French metropolis but also in English newspapers magazines and reviews so that few I fancy will commence the perusal of the present volume without having at all events some knowledge of its subject matter The Paris markets form such a world of their own and teem at certain hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life that it was only natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M Zola who to use his own words delights in any subject in which vast masses of people can be shown in motion Mr Sherard tells us that the idea of Le Ventre de Paris first occurred to M Zola in 1872 when he used continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a ramble through the Halles I have in my possession however an article written by M Zola some five or six years before that time and in this one can already detect the germ of the present work just as the motif of another of M Zola s novels La Joie de Vivre can be traced to a short story written for a Russian review img src https s3 eu west 1 amazonaws com dia kitadagitim ckeditor_assets pictures 53 content_1_original_original jpg alt height 15 width 15 font size 1 color white font img