Nana

Nana tells the story of the rise of Nana Coupeau from a street prostitute to a high class cocotte (courtesan) during the final years of the Second French Empire. Through her performance in La blonde Vénus, a fictional operetta, she attracts the attention of society and proceeds to destroy every man that she encounters. Nana is the ninth volume of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series and was published in 1880. The novel depicts the moral corruption that Zola believed was the cause of the downfall of the Second Empire.