ანოტაცია: Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was la Ville Lumiere, a perfect victim for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption. The fate of Nana, the Helen of Troy of the Second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L'Assommoir, reduced Flaubert to almost inarticulate gasps of admiration: 'Chapter 14, unsurpassable! ...Yes! ...Christ Almighty! ...Incomparable ...Straight out of Babylon!'