Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112187 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
Roger Pearson is a Fellow and Tutor of The Queen's College, Oxford, and university lecturer.

Customer Reviews

Murder and lust on 19th century railways
A gripping story of murder and lust, of the dark side of human nature -- of the beast within. The most brilliant aspects of the novel are Zola's descriptions of trains and railways on the Paris-Le Havre line, around which all action from murder to love to jealousy to a magnificently described train wreck commences. The protagonist is a young engine driver Jacques Lantier in the 1870s, son of Gervaise (depicted in _L'Assommoir_) and half-brother of Nana. Jacques is never mentioned in the earlier novels as Zola only invented him later for a clear purpose in _La Bete Humaine_.

Jacques unfortunately is the most flagrant blemish of this novel. He is an obvious literary invention, an over-simplification, and perhaps some of the other characters too are simplified to a slightly lesser extent, but Jacques' tormented character is clearly psychologically unsustainable and more of a theoretical strawman than a fully developed individual. In contrast with _Germinal_, _Nana_, and _L'Assommoir_, this sacrifice of reality for tendency is also why _La Bete Humaine_ ends up lacking in the realistic depth of the mentioned novels. Some plot twists only add to the sense of lessened realism, especially when everything takes place in about a year's time, and it all takes away some of the sting of Zola's criticism of the powers that be. Nonetheless, _La Bete Humaine_, in its depiction of primeval murderous traits hiding underneath the educated sheen of modern 19th century society, buried deep in the thunderous rumble of railways, resonates in the recesses of human mind with its sinister tragedy.

Oxford World's Classics series version is the latest English translation of the novel. Zola's colloquialisms are rendered here well in a suitably colloquial English tone, although there are a couple of "blimeys", which are English enough to appear bizarre in a French novel, translation or not. 3 stars for the meat of the book: trains and railways.

one-track mind?
I stumbled upon this book for 15p in a charity shop and now it holds pride of place in my second-hand book collection. Which is a pity, because a book so driven by mad lust, unfathomable plans, crazed desires, selfishness,metal and flesh, blood and rust, belongs somewhere else. It belongs to then, and now, effortlessly transgressing boundaries of time, sucking the reader into its twisted murderous love affair wherein the reader is reduced to the state of impotent voyeur, unable to judge- much like the impulsive protagonists.Its' themes of modernity versus the base instincts in man are ruthlessly explored ,each character is seeped in, and bound to, their own selfish ends; their own misguided understandings of possession, set against a backdrop of an industrial revoulution which reflects the disasterous shortcomings of the protagonists and their boiling provincial inadequacies. don't, don't read it on the train...

The best Zola novel
This book was written nearly 150 years ago yet feels utterly contemporary. In this book, Zola turns his attention to those members of his fictional disfuntional family who work in or around the railway. Unlike some of his other books, Zola sets aside his fixation with the social injustices of the day to create a thriller about a murder on a train and the culprits' disintegrating lives as they attempt to conceal their crime. It may be far-fetched, but the story moves at a cracking pace. The atmosphere is enhanced by the evocative descriptions of the engine drivers battling to control their steam trains. "Germinal" may be Zola's masterpiece, but nothing else he wrote matches this gripping effort for excitement.A great read.