Therese Raquin By Zola Emile Buss Robin TRN Buss Robin INT Buss Robin

by Émile Zola (Author), Robin Buss (Translator)

• Used

  Library Binding
  2015

  $3.56

  Perhaps his most famous work, Emile Zola's Therese Raquin is a dark and gripping story of lust, violence and guilt, set in the gloomy back streets of Paris. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes and an introduction by Robin Buss. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Therese Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867 and borught its twenty-seven-year-old author a notoriety that followed him throughout his life. Zola's novel is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness and ghostly revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence. Robin Buss's translation superbly conveys Zola's fearlessly honest and matter-of-fact style. In his introduction, he discusses Zola's life and literary career, and the influence of art, literature and science on his writing. This edition also includes the preface to the second edition of 1868, a chronology, further reading and notes. Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years, including Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), The Beast Within (1890), Nana (1880), and The Drinking Den (1877). If you enjoyed Therese Raquin, you might like Zola's Germinal, also available in Penguin Classics.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.25

  One of Zola's most famous realistic novels, Therese Raquin is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultry and murder among the lower classes in nineteenth-century Parisian society. Zola's shocking tale dispassionately dissects the motivations of his characters--mere human beasts, who kill in order to satisfy their lust--and stands as a key manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which the author was the founding father.

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $28.45

  A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Therese Raquin was denounced aspornography on its publication in 1867. Putrid literature was howLouis Ulbach described the novel in a contemporary review. Zoladefended himself against these attacks in his preface to the secondedition, in which he outlined his aim to produce a new, scientific form of realism. The novel marks a crucial step in Zola's developmentand is a major early work of Naturalism.In his introduction toTherese Raquin, Brian Nelson places the novel in its cultural, intellectual and artistic contexts, and compares Zola's scientific aimswith his actual practice in this work. The scientific status ofNaturalist fiction remains problematic; in the final analysis it isinfluenced by literary models and conventions. Zola's powerfulmythopoeic imagination does much to counteract the mechanistic view ofhumanity the novel was intended to embody. The myth of the fall is, indeed, fundamental to Zola's Naturalistic vision.