Germinal. Emile Zola. 2008.

Zola’s masterpiece of working life, Germinal, exposes the inhuman conditions of French miners in the 1860s. The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow miners in a strike against pay-cuts which becomes a losing battle against starvation, repression and sabotage. Yet despite the violence and disillusion which rock the mining community to its foundations, Lantier retains his belief in the ultimate germination of a new society, leading to a better world.