Émile Zola’s Pot Luck (originally Au Bonheur des Dames) is a classic exploration of ambition, capitalism, and society through the lens of a Parisian department store. Zola’s naturalistic style brings to life the interplay of desire, greed, and human struggle, portraying characters navigating a world driven by commerce, social climbing, and personal passion. A compelling and vivid social commentary, it’s a key work in Zola’s celebrated Rougon-Macquart series. Brian Nelson’s translation and notes provide helpful context, making this Oxford World's Classics edition both accessible and richly informative for modern readers.
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![Lucky Per (1904) has long been revered in its homeland as "the great Danish novel." Henrik Pontoppidan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1917 and hailed by Thomas Mann as "a full-blooded storyteller." His masterpiece is an epic portrayal of social and cultural change that feels surprisingly modern more than a century after its writing.
Pontoppidan provides a panoramic view of the contradictions of the modernizing world through the portrait of a single driven and beleaguered soul. Per Sidenius, unhappy son of an austere clergyman, rejects his faith and flees the Danish countryside for the capital city . Gifted and ambitious, he arrives in Copenhagen believing "you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast...[and] capture and bind it." Per's obsession is a grandiose engineering scheme that he believes will reshape both Denmark's landscape and its minor position in the world. While working relentlessly to achieve this inflated vision of personal and national destiny, he pursues the fiercely independent heiress Jakobe Salomon, the most appealing character in the book and one of the greatest Jewish heroines in European literature. Though Per's ambitions come to grief along the way at its heart his story turns on his belated understanding of the true relationship between "luck" and "happiness" (the Danish word in the title contains both meanings). In its expansive richness and its humane depths, Lucky Per is a triumph of world literature.
Translated from the Danish by Naomi Lebowitz
Introduction by Garth Risk Hallberg](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-ezptpblrxu/images/stencil/500x659/products/1227/1968/LuckyPer__35307.1668716752.jpg?c=2 "Lucky Per (1904) has long been revered in its homeland as \"the great Danish novel.\" Henrik Pontoppidan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1917 and hailed by Thomas Mann as \"a full-blooded storyteller.\" His masterpiece is an epic portrayal of social and cultural change that feels surprisingly modern more than a century after its writing.
Pontoppidan provides a panoramic view of the contradictions of the modernizing world through the portrait of a single driven and beleaguered soul. Per Sidenius, unhappy son of an austere clergyman, rejects his faith and flees the Danish countryside for the capital city . Gifted and ambitious, he arrives in Copenhagen believing \"you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast...[and] capture and bind it.\" Per's obsession is a grandiose engineering scheme that he believes will reshape both Denmark's landscape and its minor position in the world. While working relentlessly to achieve this inflated vision of personal and national destiny, he pursues the fiercely independent heiress Jakobe Salomon, the most appealing character in the book and one of the greatest Jewish heroines in European literature. Though Per's ambitions come to grief along the way at its heart his story turns on his belated understanding of the true relationship between \"luck\" and \"happiness\" (the Danish word in the title contains both meanings). In its expansive richness and its humane depths, Lucky Per is a triumph of world literature.
Translated from the Danish by Naomi Lebowitz
Introduction by Garth Risk Hallberg")
