"A Moment of Truth is a biographical novel of the life and times of Zola. It is also a cultural fresco of late nineteenth-century France.
A Moment of Truth tells of Zola’s early struggle against poverty and incomprehension; his blood-brother friendship with Paul Cezanne; his backing of the scorned Impressionists; his monumental creation of twenty Rougon-Macquart novels depicting and dissecting the French Second Empire in raw and often lurid prose. "