Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola"s scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siècle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana--the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L"Assommoir--is now rendered in racy, stylish English.