13 h 23 minAudiobook5 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 13 h 23 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the truth you spend your life uncovering is the very thing your family wants destroyed?
In the southern town of Plassans, Pascal Rougon keeps his family's history in a cupboard full of folders. A country doctor devoted to research, he traces the traits that pass from parent to child. His niece Clotilde helps him work, while his proud mother, Félicité, wants the papers destroyed. For Pascal, they hold knowledge; for her, they threaten the family's good name.
Inside La Souleiade, science and faith pull at the same household. Pascal believes in progress and searches for a way to heal. Clotilde longs for mystery, religion and a place of her own. As their affection changes into forbidden love, Émile Zola brings his Rougon-Macquart saga to a close with a slow, intimate novel about inheritance, desire and the possibility of choosing something new.
What you’ll discover
- A cupboard of family secrets Explore the records Pascal treasures and the truths his mother fears.
- Science beside faith Follow Pascal and Clotilde as their different beliefs test their closeness.
- Love that unsettles Enter a household where familiar affection becomes something harder to name.
- A sunbaked southern home Step among old stone walls, dry garden soil and tall trees.
- The weight of inheritance Consider whether a family's past determines a life or leaves room for choice.
Who will love it
For readers who love novels about ideas and feeling, science and faith, forbidden love and family secrets, and anyone eager to see how Zola brings his family saga together.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A scientist lives in a sunbaked house
- The family tree fills a cupboard
- Clotilde and Pascal disagree about faith
- Félicité wants the papers destroyed
- Pascal tries to cure with a new method
- Pressure builds inside the household
- Affection between uncle and niece changes
- What the book says about legacy and life
- How Zola builds the final novel
Who’s who
- Pascal RougonA gentle country doctor of about sixty who studies heredity through his own family and hopes to heal the weak with a new treatment.
- ClotildePascal's niece, raised in his house, who helps with his work while longing for faith and happiness.
- Félicité RougonPascal's proud, scheming mother, who wants to protect the family's name and fears what her son's papers may reveal.
- MartineThe devoted old servant who runs La Souleiade, loves her master dearly and prays anxiously for his soul.
- Doctor RamondA young, steady doctor and friend of the household, who admires Pascal and hopes for a future with Clotilde.
- Aunt DideAdélaïde Fouque, the very old woman in the asylum at Tulettes from whom the whole Rougon-Macquart family descends.
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- The key ideas in about 5 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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El doctor Pascal in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
El doctor Pascal
by Émile Zola · 1893
A doctor traces his family's secrets through a cupboard of records, while his mother fights to protect their name.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
One old doctor keeps the secrets of an entire family locked in a cupboard, and everyone around him wants a say in what happens to them. Doctor Pascal is the twentieth and last novel in Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, published in 1893.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A scientist lives in a sunbaked house
The story opens in a southern summer at La Souleiade, Pascal's house of old stone, shutters and a dry garden. It is both a home and a kind of laboratory.
Pascal is nearly sixty, gentle and curious. Poor patients love him because he often refuses payment. Clotilde, his niece, has grown up under his roof and copies his notes.
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What is Doctor Pascal about?
It follows an aging scientist in Provence who studies heredity through his own family's records. His niece, mother and servant each have a stake in his work, and their feelings and beliefs collide in the house where he lives.
Do I need to read the other Rougon-Macquart novels first?
No. The book can be read alone, since Pascal's study recalls the family and its history. Yet readers who know earlier novels in the cycle will catch more of the names, fates and echoes Zola gathers here.
Where does Doctor Pascal fit in the Rougon-Macquart series?
It is the twentieth and final novel, published in 1893. Zola uses it to look back over the whole family tree he built across the cycle and to draw its main ideas about heredity together.
The author
Émile Zola
1840–1902 · French novelist
Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, and poet. He was born in Paris, grew up in Aix-en-Provence, and later lived in Paris and Médan. He wrote Thérèse Raquin (1867), Nana (1880), and Germinal (1885). His twenty-novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart, appeared between 1871 and 1893.
More by Émile Zola
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