Mathieu Froment lives in the suburbs of Paris and travels to the city every day to work. He and his wife Marianne have a loving relationship and an enormous amount of children. 'Fruitfulness' is the first book in Emile Zola’s series , 'Les Quatre Évangiles', where he explores the four qualities he felt were necessary to a healthy society: fertility, labor, truth, and justice.

Émile Zola (1840 – 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.