The contents of the book are as follows: The collection took its title from Zola's house at Médan, near Paris, where writers would meet for literary dinners.

The aim of the collection was to promote the ideals of Naturalism, by treating the events of the Franco-Prussian War in a realistic and often unheroic way, in contrast to officially approved patriotic views of the war.

By far the most famous story in the collection is Boule de Suif, which immediately launched the career of the young Guy de Maupassant.

Zola's story became the basis for an opera of the same name by Alfred Bruneau.

This article about a collection of short stories published in the 1880s is a stub.