Zola derrière le rideau de fer ed. by Aurélie Barjonet and Karl Zieger (review).

The article focuses on the edited volume *Zola derrière le rideau de fer*, which examines the reception of Émile Zola’s works across Eastern European socialist states during the Cold War (1945–1989). Organized by national literary cultures, the book explores how Zola’s literature was interpreted and circulated within the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, highlighting diverse and sometimes contradictory receptions shaped by geopolitics, ideology, and state power. The volume reveals Zola’s ambivalent position in the communist literary canon, where he was simultaneously embraced as a proletarian ally and critiqued for his naturalism by Marxist intellectuals. Employing a sociological and empirical methodology, the book provides extensive data on translations, editions, and critical discourse, contributing to broader discussions on Cold War literary reception, Marxist criticism, and transnational French literature.