Book description
La Bete humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart
series, is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a
tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate
study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control.
Zola considered this his 'most finely worked' novel, and in it he
powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where
society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives
and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human
nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the
burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the
veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast
within.
Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist and critic, the founder
of the Naturalist movement in literature. Among Zola's most important
works is his famous Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893), which
included such novels as L'Assomoir (1877), about the suffering
of the Parisian working-class, Nana (1880), dealing with
prostitution, and Germinal (1885).
Roger Whitehouse has taught at the Sorbonne and at Bolton Institute,
where he is a research fellow.
