‘Abbe Faujas has arrived!'The arrival of Abbe Faujas in
the provincial town of Plassans has profound consequences for the
community, and for the family of Francois Mouret in particular. Faujas
and his mother come to lodge with Francois, his wife Marthe, and their
three children, and Marthe quickly falls under the influence of the
priest. Ambitious and unscrupulous, Faujas gradually infiltrates into
all quarters of the town, intent on political as well as religious
conquest. Intrigue, slander, and insinuation tear the townsfolk apart,
creating suspicion and distrust, and driving the Mourets to ever more extreme actions.The fourth novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart sequence, The Conquest of Plassans returns to the fictional Provencal town from which the family sprang in The Fortune of the Rougons.
In one of the most psychological of his novels, Zola links small-town
politics to the greater political and national dramas of the Second
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