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La B?te Humaine
Oxford University Press
April 2009
On Sale: March 25, 2009
432 pages ISBN: 0199538662 EAN: 9780199538669 Kindle: B00BEW9ORS Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
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Literature and Fiction
Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep
within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine
(1890), 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. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet
deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and
detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical,
and literary context.
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