The Flood

Depressing naturalist short story with clear and vivid writing that recreates the tragic situation (based on a real life flood in the region) well, though it's decidedly a slight and minor work in the grander Zola corpus.

"The Flood" (aka "L'Inondation") is a short story by Émile Zola published in 1880. It takes place in a rural village on the Garonne River near Toulouse revolving around an actual flooding incident there in 1875. Although not a religious story, it has some biblical imagery, beginning with the stories title. The main character is a 70 year old patriarch who sits down to a Last Supper of sorts with his family of 11 to give thanks for his many blessings. His daughter will soon to be married, and he plans to add another floor to the top of the house for the expanding brood. But after supper, the rains begin, and the nearby river overflows its banks. Like an Ark, the families wooden house provides shelter. But this is no ordinary flood; show more first the animals, then the servants are swept away, described in the type of realism Zola is renowned for. The family, moving heavenly upwards, eventually take refuge on the roof, watching the refuse of the land swept away and made smooth like the surface of a pond. One tragic incident after the next occurs bringing to mind the Raft of the Medusa, or a feeling like Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream."

It reminds me of a 19th century Cormac McCarthy or Flannery O'Connor for its bloodbath. In a few short pages he kills off an entire family of men, women and children in detail. This translation is poor, somewhat stilted, and would greatly benefit from a modern update, but still manages to move in the end.

The text is available as "The Flood" on Internet Archive, a scanned edition of the first English translation.
An audiobook version is available as "The Flood" by LibriVox, read by R. S. Steinberg.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd show less