Germinal by Émile Zola, 1885
So mad props. It's very possible that this is the gnarliest and most harrowing book I've read but I'm drawing a blank on too much competition at the moment. Either way, it's easily one of them for sure. Old fashioned prose and insanely descriptive in all aspects from imagery to the very suffering of mankind. Like you can just feel the anguish this book exudes.
The strike got going earlier than I expected and from there on the book wasn't messing around. Certain moments of an especially severe nature had me thinking that it was the zenith of monstrosities but it just kept getting worse. Mutilated bourgeois genitals, horses dying in pain, brains spurting out everywhere, claustrophobia that damn near made me ache.
This was gripping, but in the way a vice would grip your skull until it implodes. Moving and without relent.
5/5