Product Description

'It was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.' The Kill (La Curée) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire (1852-70) and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure. The all-pervading promiscuity of the new Paris is reflected in the dissolute and frenetic lives of an unscrupulous property speculator, Saccard, his neurotic wife Renée, and her dandified lover, Saccard's son Maxime.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22504 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 318 pages

Times LIterary Supplement, March 11, 2005
This new version is welcome.

Review
Nelson's translation is preceded by a highly useful and scrupulously researched introduction [with] a depth of analysis rarely found in introduction of this kind... The translation itself is sensitive and elegant...the text reads as an engaging and thoughtful close rereading of the original which is especially effective in bringing Zola's fascination with descriptive detail to the attention of the anglophone reader without syntactically overburdening the prose. (Hannah Thompson, Modern Languages Review vol 102, part1 )

Customer Reviews

Best of the early Zolas
The second novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, this is one of his best novels. Written in 1871 and published just after the fall of the Second Empire in France, "The Kill" shows that society at its decadent height. The action takes place in the playgrounds of the fabulously wealthy and tells the story of a woman driven into a scandalous affair by her oblivious husband's utter self-obsession and greed, set against the backdrop of Haussmann's massive redevelopment and the birth of modern Paris. This new translation is excellent, and represents the first new English edition for almost 110 years.

Second Empire Decadence: Use or be Used
This new translation by Brian Nelson is excellent. He captures Zola's juxtaposition of intensely detailed descriptive passages with fast moving dialogue. The over wrought, MillsandBoonesque descriptions of hothouse l'amour are great fun. In this novel, sympathetic characters are hard to find. Apparently based on real individuals and events, Zola pulls no punches in his portrayl of greed and lust and how they impact upon the protagonists. The prosaic final two lines of the novel feel like a bucket of cold water dumped over the reader's head.