The Kill
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Literary readers able to read French and interested in Zola's naturalist method
- Those interested in nineteenth-century Paris urban history and capital speculation
- Literature students studying the relations of family, desire, and money in the novel
- Advanced readers who enjoy socially critical realist works
Not a good fit for
- Readers unable to read French and not planning to use a parallel translation
- Readers who prefer light, warm-hearted subjects and are uncomfortable with depictions of corruption
- Beginners seeking a quick overview of Zola's entire output
Reading tips
- First review the historical background of Paris urban renewal and real-estate speculation, then follow the novel's threads of wealth.
- Note how family relations and money transactions are juxtaposed, and track the shifts in characters' desires.
- Pair with other works in the series to observe how Zola repeatedly writes social ascent and downfall.
- When reading the French original, prioritize close reading of environmental description passages to appreciate their narrative function.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
How difficult is the French in this book, and is it suitable for beginners?
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Comments
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About the author
Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, critic and political activist, one of the most prominent French writers of the late nineteenth century and the founder of the theory of naturalism. Through his twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart he constructed a vast social panorama, with representative works including Germinal, L'Assommoir, Au Bonheur des Dames and La Bête humaine. These works often take workers, peasants and ordinary city people as their protagonists, presenting poverty, labour and desire with meticulous observation and an almost documentary style, calm yet powerful. During the Dreyfus Affair Zola published the famous open letter J'Accuse, intervening in public affairs as an intellectual in the cause of justice. The library holds 93 of his works, including several translations.
