Here is a true publishing eventâthe first modern translation of a lost masterpiece by one of fictionâs giants. Censored upon publication in 1871, out of print since the 1950s, and untranslated for a century, Zolaâs The Kill (La CurÃĐe) emerges as an unheralded classic of naturalism. Second in the authorâs twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart saga, it is a riveting story of family transgression, heedless desire, and societal greed.
The incestuous affair of RenÃĐe Saccard and her stepson, Maxime, is set against the frenzied speculation of RenÃĐeâs financier husband, Aristide, in a Paris becoming a modern metropolis and âthe capital of the nineteenth century.â In the end, setting and story merge in actions that leave a womanâs spirit and a cityâs soul ravaged beyond repair. As vividly rendered by Arthur Goldhammer, one of the worldâs premier translators from the French, The Kill contains all the qualities of the school of fiction marked, as Henry James wrote, by âinfernal intelligence.â
In this new incarnation, The Kill joins Nana and Germinal on the shelf of Zola classics, works by an immortal author whoâexplicit, pitiless, wise, and unrelentingâalways goes in for the kill.