Shortlisted for the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize
   

• The first modern translation for more than fifty years and the first critical edition of A Love Story, the eighth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series.
• Excellent new translation by Helen Constantine, well known for her editions of Paris Tales (OUP, 2004) and French Tales (OUP, 2008) and translations of Zola, Gautier, and Balzac for Penguin and Oxford World's Classics.
• Intoduction and notes by Brian Nelson, the distinguished translator of many Zola editions for Oxford World's Classics including The Fortune of the Rougons and The Ladies' Paradise
• A fascinating study in sexual psychology and sexual politics that brings into question Zola's attitudes towards adultery and bourgeois marriage
• Includes an up-to-date bibliography, chronology of the author, and helpful explanatory notes

   
'Everything revolved around their love. They were constantly bathed in a passion that they carried with them, around them, as though it were the only air they could breathe.'
   
Hélène Grandjean, an attractive young widow, lives a secluded life in Paris with her only child, Jeanne. Jeanne is a delicate and nervous girl who jealously guards her mother's affections. When Jeanne falls ill, she is attended by Dr Deberle, whose growing admiration for Hélène gradually turns into mutual passion. Deberle's wife Juliette, meanwhile, flirts with a shallow admirer, and Hélène, intent on preventing her adultery, precipitates a crisis whose consequences are far-reaching. Jeanne realizes she has a rival for Hélène's devotion in the doctor, and begins to exercise a tyrannous hold over her mother.
  
The eighth novel in Zola's celebrated Rougon-Macquart series, A Love Story is an intense psychological and nuanced portrayal of love's different guises. Zola's study extends most notably to the city of Paris itself, whose shifting moods reflect Hélène's emotional turmoil in passages of extraordinary lyrical description.