Beast Within

La Bete humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, is one of Zola''s most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his ''most finely worked'' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second E...