His Excellency Eugène Rougon is set in the world of high politics and low characters during the Second Empire. The main protagonist, Eugène Rougon, is an determined and ruthless politician surrounded by a coterie of ambitious and greedy political supporters. In a world where no one can be fully trusted and nothing is ever certain, intrigues and conspiracies flourish. Who is the Italian beauty seen everywhere in Parisian society? Is she looking for a husband or building her own influence and following? Is her supposed connection to the Royal court in Italy real or fantasy? Will Rougon succumb to her charms or will she become a stepping-stone on his own path to power? Which politicians will gain the most support from the world of business and administration, in return for favourable considerations, once in power, naturally! This remarkable novel gives us a view of the world of political power under the Empire: of a crass, reactionary and decadent ruling class, uneasily clustered around the banal and ambivalent figure of the Emperor Louis Napoleon III. Rougon is a brooding and enigmatic man who lusts after power for its own sake. As his career crashes and soars, deadly events are manipulated with bold cynicism. But victory is ever fleeting and success is little more than betrayal postponed in the degenerate milieu of the second Bonapartist Empire.
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