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Zusatztext "Goldhammer's translation of Zola's satiric, transgressive tale--about, among other things, Paris, modernity, incest, and the order of the new--is a work of pure delight. And his introduction to the novel is simply brilliant." --Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: An American Financier "Zola's ferocious, brutally direct novel of modern desire is made fully present in Arthur Goldhammer's new translation. It is Paris then, it is our city now. " -Jay Cantor, author of Great Neck and Krazy Kat "Elegantly translated, with his customary urbane sparkle and precision, by Arthur Goldhammer, this new edition of The Kill is a pleasure to be savored." -Ella Taylor, film critic, LA Weekly Informationen zum Autor Émile Zola was a French novelist, journalist, and the most prominent figure in the literary school of naturalism. Zola is best known for his detailed and unflinching depictions of French society. His works explore themes of social injustice, human nature, and the influence of environment and heredity on personal fate.Zola's most famous work is the Les Rougon-Macquart series, a sprawling cycle of 20 novels that trace the lives of multiple generations of a family, set against the backdrop of Second Empire France. The series includes notable works like Germinal, a powerful novel about coal miners' struggles, Thérèse Raquin, a dark tale of passion and murder, and The Downfall (La Débâcle), which explores the impact of the Franco-Prussian War. His work was a critical reflection on the failings of society, and he championed the rights of the working class and the oppressed Zola's influence on literature was immense, and his works are considered foundational to the naturalist movement. Klappentext Here is a true publishing event-the first modern translation of a lost masterpiece by one of fiction's giants. Censored upon publication in 1871, out of print since the 1950s, and untranslated for a century, Zola's The Kill (La Curée) emerges as an unheralded classic of naturalism. Second in the author's twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart saga, it is a riveting story of family transgression, heedless desire, and societal greed. The incestuous affair of Renée Saccard and her stepson, Maxime, is set against the frenzied speculation of Renée's financier husband, Aristide, in a Paris becoming a modern metropolis and "the capital of the nineteenth century.” In the end, setting and story merge in actions that leave a woman's spirit and a city's soul ravaged beyond repair. As vividly rendered by Arthur Goldhammer, one of the world's premier translators from the French, The Kill contains all the qualities of the school of fiction marked, as Henry James wrote, by "infernal intelligence.” In this new incarnation, The Kill joins Nana and Germinal on the shelf of Zola classics, works by an immortal author who-explicit, pitiless, wise, and unrelenting-always goes in for the kill. Leseprobe 1 On the way back, in the crush of carriages returning via the lakeshore, the caleche was obliged to slow to a walk. At one point the congestion became so bad that it was even forced to a stop. The sun was setting in a light gray October sky with streaks of thin cloud on the horizon. A last ray of sunlight descending from the distant heights of the falls threaded its way along the carriageway, bathing the long line of stalled carriages in a pale reddish light. Glimmers of gold and bright flashes from the wheels seemed to cling to the straw-yellow trim of the caleche, whose deep blue side panels reflected bits of the surrounding landscape. And higher up, fully immersed in the reddish light that illuminated them from the rear and caused the brass buttons of their cloaks, half-folded over the back of the seat, to glow, the coachman and footman in their dark blue livery, putty-colored breeches, and striped black-and-yellow waistcoats held themselves erec...