Au bonheur des dames / Emie Zola ; preface by Armand Lanoux at the Goncourt Academy.

Octave Mouret maddens women with desire. Its Parisian department store, Au Bonheur des Dames, is a paradise for the senses. The fabrics pile up, dazzling, delicate. Everything a woman could buy in 1883, Octave Mouret sold it, using revolutionary techniques. The success is immense. But this mess is a disaster for the neighborhood, small businesses are dying, real estate speculation is increasing. And the staff have a hell of a life. Denise ends up in this furnace from Valognes, destitute but tenacious. Zola makes the young girl and her powerful boss in love with her the symbol of modernism and the crises it provokes. No one will ever be able to enter a department store without feeling what Zola brilliantly describes: the tingling of life.