Sign-In
Cart
The Joy of Life: A New Translation
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 20 2024
Pages: 344
Weight: 0.92
Height: 0.86 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
She gave everything. They took it all. And still she found reasons to live.
At ten years old, Pauline Quenu loses her parents and is sent to live with distant relatives in a small seaside village. The Chanteaus welcome her warmly-and immediately begin stealing her inheritance. Her adoptive father writhes with gout while his wife manipulates the accounts. Lazare, their brilliant son, abandons every project he begins, paralyzed by awareness that all effort is ultimately futile, that life is suffering without redemption, that death awaits regardless.
Into this household of illness, greed, and philosophical despair, Pauline brings an inexplicable generosity. She nurses the sick, manages the failing household, supports Lazare emotionally through his depressions. When he becomes engaged to her and then falls in love with another woman, Pauline sacrifices her own happiness to help arrange their marriage. She gives and gives and gives-her money, her labor, her love, her future-asking nothing in return.
The ocean batters the coastline, slowly reclaiming the village despite all efforts to resist. Bodies decay, ambitions fail, love proves transient. Lazare reads Schopenhauer and concludes that existence itself is the problem. Yet Pauline persists, finding meaning in small acts of kindness, maintaining serenity that eludes those who pursue only their own interests.
Émile Zola's most philosophically dense and emotionally complex novel is a meditation on suffering, selflessness, and whether life can justify its own pain. The title is bitterly ironic-there is little conventional joy here-yet through Pauline's inexplicable goodness, Zola explores whether generosity itself, the capacity to alleviate suffering despite receiving nothing in return, might constitute the only joy of life existence offers.
Some find meaning in philosophy. Some in pleasure. And some in the simple, inexplicable act of caring for others-even when it costs them everything.
From the author of Germinal-a novel that asks the hardest question: Why continue living when suffering is inevitable? And answers: Because someone must bear witness. Because someone must care. Because goodness persists even when nothing justifies it.
Also from
Ferousse, Liam
Three Short Stories and One Novella (The Onyx Seal, Léa, A Story Without a Name, A Page of History): A New Translation
Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules
Paperback
Also in
Fiction Anthologies
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Robert M.
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Hardcover
James Weldon Johnson: Writings (Loa #145): The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man / Along This Way / Essays and Editorials / Selected Poems
Johnson, James Weldon
Hardcover
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Shelley, Mary
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Paperback
Sez I to Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt
McCourt, Malachy
McCourt, Frank
Hardcover
Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All.
Allen, Mel
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Sophocles
Euripides
Aeschylus
Paperback
Learn Russian with Beginner Stories: Interlinear Russian to English
Hyplern, Bermuda Word
Gettys, Serafima
Van Den End, Kees
Paperback
Obvious Adams -- The Story of a Successful Businessman: New Business Edition
Updegraff, Robert R.
Paperback
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews
Poe, Edgar Allan
Hardcover
Bookin' in the Big House: What I Learned Leading a Women's Prison Book Club
Devoto, Pat Cunningham
Paperback
Japanese Folktales for Language Learners: Bilingual Legends and Fables in Japanese and English (Free Online Audio Recording)
Sato, Eriko
Sato, Anna
Paperback
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, volume 1
Fager, Anders
Cubas, Cristina Fernández
Pedraza, Pilar
Paperback
The Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio (Facsimile Reprint)
Randall, Emilius Oviatt
Randall, E. O.
Paperback