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Thérèse Raquin

by Émile Zola

Narrator Juliet Stevenson

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Translator Henry Vizetelly (updated)

Length 8 hours 35 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“This 19th-century psychological thriller follows the breakdown of a French woman and her lover as their crushing guilt begins to overshadow the selfish, harried desire that led them to murder her husband. Akin to Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, Thérèse Raquin is an exploration of human depravity, egotism, and severe remorse incorporated into a harrowing and unanticipated love story. Read this novel if you are a fan of romances that persist until the very last bitter second of the characters' lives. ”
— Lambie • Underground Books

Summary

Published in 1867, Thérèse Raquin is the novel which established Zola’s reputation as a writer who forensically explored the darker side of human nature. Thérèse is a half Algerian orphan, brought up in provincial France by her aunt and married off to her sickly cousin Camille. His ambition takes the three of them to Paris, where they set up home in the dank and dingy backstreets that run down to the Seine. The relentless tedium of life for Thérèse is eventually broken by the presence of Camille’s unscrupulous friend Laurent, sparking a series of increasingly desperate acts. Thérèse Raquin is a gritty and thought-provoking novel of sexual compulsion and its consequences on the lives of four people and a tabby cat.

Classics Fiction