Considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s.

Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

Germinal is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, but it is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigour and power in this new translation.

Germinal has been published and translated in over one hundred countries and has additionally inspired five film adaptations and two television productions.