The Kill by Emile Zola. New York. 1957. Citadel Press. Translated from the French by A. Teixeira de Mattos. Introduction by Angus Wilson. 274 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Pagram.  

DESCRIPTION - With the publication of THE KILL this series of Zola translations reaches a milestone, for this is one of the key novels in Zola's pitiless analysis of nineteenth-century Paris. This novel plunges deep into what Angus Wilson has called ‘the feverish, complicated world of the adventure-speculators who formed the cafe-society of the Second Empire.' It is the rapacious world of the gamblers who flocked to Paris for their share of the spoils to be carved out of Baron Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris. This was the motive that drew Aristide Saccard to Paris; and here the theme of financial gain becomes intertwined with that of physical desire. As his second wife, Saccard marries Renee, a wealthy and attractive young woman. His son by his first marriage, Maxime, comes home from school and his step-mother, already bored with her money-obsessed husband, introduces him to the shallow, frivolous society fife which is her sole occupation. Little by little, as Maxime grows up, seduces the servant girl, takes mistresses, has affairs with his stepmother's friends, Renee herself falls in love with her stepson - and so comes about the half-incestuous theme of the book which Zola called ‘a study in money and the flesh'. It is also the powerful portrait of a degenerate world, immeshed in the lust for gain and pleasure.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.

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