It's sex and shopping for 400 pulsating pages in Zola's gripping 1883 novel (recently adapted for television by the BBC). From the opening image of the great Parisian dress emporium, all gilded cherubs and lavish window displays of satins and silks, you are hooked. (...) Fireworks, passion, lust, heartbreak, class-conflict... all the crucial elements are in this rip-roaring classic.

The Daily Mail

Zola overwhelms us with an abundance of description that oscillates between fantastical lyricism and meticulous realism, with plenty of rather wry psychological analysis to hold the two poles together.

Tim Parks

I consider Zola's books among the very best of the present time.

Vincent Van Gogh

To enjoy Zola at his best, you have to read one of the great novels, in which a whole panorama emerges, as in the work of one of those highly realistic nineteenth-century painters.

A.N. Wilson

Perhaps the most famous novel about shopping is Émile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise… For Zola, the department store was a metaphor for the triumph of capitalism… but he also saw it as the place where women were duped and enslaved into the new habit of consumerism.

The Guardian

It's an excellent edition!

P.D. Smith