First published in 1893, this novel is concerned with the bourgeois soul and its inability to will or act. The heroes are typically men of business, but with cultural pretensions and he depicts them in their free time when they are not working.
Fin du XIX siècle, les grands magasins parisiens révolutionnent le commerce. Denise Baudu, venue de sa province, en découvre l'univers turbulent. Vendeuse, elle monte en grade sous les ordres du directeur d'un de ces établissements. Octave Mouret. Relation singulière, puisque la jeune femme convertira finalement le cynique séducteur aux valeurs de l'amour... Happy end pour un roman naturaliste qui expose les rouages de la modernité commerciale, la fascination qu'elle exerce sur les femmes, et son emprise sur la ville.
This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a family and a hilarious account of addiction and failure as its helpless hero, notionally undergoing psychiatric help, manages spectacularly to fail to give up smoking, run his business or make sense of his private life.A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination ZENO'S CONSCIENCE has provoked enormous affection in its readers both in Italian and English since its first publication in the 1920s.