Emile Zola’s main work was a cycle of twenty novels under the common title `Rougon-Macquart`, tracing the history of one family in the era of the Second Empire. It brought Zola worldwide fame, and the success of one of the novels—`Nana`—was scandalous. In many countries it was persecuted by censorship, and in Denmark and England it was even banned. The main heroine of the novel, the courtesan Nana, became an embodiment of society’s vices, moral decline, and monstrous hypocrisy.