The Soil (aka The Earth; French original title: La Terre), around which the greatest controversy has raged, is a novel which treats of the conditions of agricultural life in France before the war with Prussia (1870-1871), and the subsequent downfall of the Second Empire. It is, in some respects, the most powerful of all Zola’s novels. In parts the book is Shakespearian in its strength. Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (see The Fortune of the Rougons), having served his time in the Army, comes to the plain of La Beauce, and becomes an agricultural labourer on the farm of La Borderie, which belonged to Alexandre Hourdequin. He falls in love with a neighbour, Lise Mouche, and later her sister Françoise…