The Beast Within (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Zola, Émile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140449639 ISBN 13: 9780140449631

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2007

Synopsis

Presents a tale of murder, passion, and possession. This novel is a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control.

About this title

Synopsis:

"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.

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0140449639
• ISBN 13: 9780140449631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 405