Emile Zola is one of the pillars of world realistic literature, the leader and theorist of the literary movement of naturalism, a keen researcher of everyday life, a passionate human rights activist and publicist who influenced the entire realistic direction of literature of the 20th century and, above all, the school of “new journalism”: Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer. His most famous work is the epoch-making twenty-volume cycle “Rugon-Macquart”, opening before the reader an endless panorama of human vices and virtues in the scenery of the Second Empire. This is an encyclopedia of the life of Paris and the French province based on the material of several generations of one family, which gave birth to the strangest fruits, an epic dizzying in its detail and scale, where there is everything: greed and selflessness, love for one’s neighbor and bestial passion, lofty aspirations and everyday routine, pride , cruelty, cynicism and violence, the rise and fall of the strong and weak of this world. This illustrated edition includes the seventh and eighth novels of the cycle - a deep dive into the life of the Parisian bourgeoisie, a comical panorama, sometimes touching, but often scary. Octave Mouret, a pragmatist and womanizer, comes to Paris, where he rises to the top, seducing women and inspiring confidence in men. He inherits and expands the Ladies' Happiness store - his pride, the embodiment of an effective and cynical approach to trade and advertising - but all this dazzling shine fades when Mouret meets Denise Baudu, a modest saleswoman who, against her will, wins his heart... Roman " Foam" is published in a magnificent new translation.