Thérèse Raquin

by Émile Zola, Walter Brendel (Translator)

Overview

'Therese Raquin' is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower orders in nineteenth-century Paris. Zola's dispassionate dissection of the motivations of his characters, mere 'human beasts' who kill in order to satisfy their lust, is much more than an atmospheric Second Empire period-piece. 'Therese Raquin' stands as a key early manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which Zola was the founding father. Even today, this novel has lost none of its power to shock.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783754909065
Publisher:	epubli
Publication date:	10/14/2021
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	371 KB
Age Range:	1 - 18 Years
Language:	German

About the Author

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.

Editorial Reviews

Zola’s blunt, unprettified representation of the most sordid elements of life—infidelity, murder, madness and suicide—seemed revolutionary in the context of his time. Especially remarkable was Zola’s gritty portrayal of his eponymous central character Thérèse, a brilliantly radical departure from the simpering female prototypes of Victorian convention.”

|Los Angeles Times

English actor Juliet Stevenson’s nuanced performance of this classic tale of obsession lures listeners into a nineteenth-century Parisian storefront, where lust and shadows lurk. Unhappily married to her sickly cousin, Camille, and working in her aunt’s dingy clothing store, Thérèse Raquin starts an affair with Camille’s colleague. After murdering Camille, the lovers are haunted to the point of madness by their crime. Stevenson’s straightforward narration exemplifies Zola’s famously scientific approach to storytelling, which studied “temperaments, not personalities.” The book has little dialogue, releasing Stevenson from inventing French accents, but when needed, her pronunciation of the Parisian streets and neighborhoods is perfect. Her vibrant alto pitch, crystalline enunciation, and expressive reading enliven Zola’s descriptive writing, sending listeners deep into Paris’s underworld. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MAY 2022 - AudioFile

English actor Juliet Stevenson’s nuanced performance of this classic tale of obsession lures listeners into a nineteenth-century Parisian storefront, where lust and shadows lurk. Unhappily married to her sickly cousin, Camille, and working in her aunt’s dingy clothing store, Thérèse Raquin starts an affair with Camille’s colleague. After murdering Camille, the lovers are haunted to the point of madness by their crime. Stevenson’s straightforward narration exemplifies Zola’s famously scientific approach to storytelling, which studied “temperaments, not personalities.” The book has little dialogue, releasing Stevenson from inventing French accents, but when needed, her pronunciation of the Parisian streets and neighborhoods is perfect. Her vibrant alto pitch, crystalline enunciation, and expressive reading enliven Zola’s descriptive writing, sending listeners deep into Paris’s underworld. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MAY 2022 - AudioFile