\b0 Published in 1885, \i Germinal\i0 was the thirteenth volume in the saga of \i Les Rougon-Macquar
t\i0 . In the book, Emile Zola describes the misery of the miners in the north, caught between the rapacity of primitive capitalism and the dangerous path of rebellion, between the degradation of inhuman toil and the hope of a hard-to-achieve solidarity.
The conflict between capital and labor is summed up through his portrayal of the members of a working class locked in struggle with the representatives of order and property during the painful birth of modern Europe. And it took the inspiration and geni
us of Zola to capture the miners' violence and irrepressible desire for justice: a desire symbolized by the name given in the Revolutionary calendar to the month in which the seeds for the coming harvest send out their first shoots, \i Germinal\i0 , whic
