Émile Zola

Émile Zola was a French novelist and leading figure of literary naturalism. His Rougon-Macquart sequence examines family, class, labour, politics and urban life under the Second Empire, while his intervention in the Dreyfus affair made him a major public intellectual.

Émile Zola also held the offices or ranks of president of the Société des gens de lettres. Émile Zola was born in rue Saint-Joseph and died in 9th arrondissement of Paris.

Robert Harris’ An Officer and a Spy brings Émile Zola into the Dreyfus Affair when Colonel Georges Picquart’s discovery of evidence against the real spy collides with the army’s determination to preserve the original conviction. Zola’s public intervention, culminating in his accusation that the state and military had protected injustice, turns a secret intelligence scandal into a national political crisis and gives Picquart’s private struggle a powerful public ally.