La Bête Humaine [The Beast Within] (English Edition)

By: Émile Zola

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Against the backdrop of political and legal corruption in Second Empire France, La Bête Humaine (1890) contrasts the technological advancements of the Machine Age with the primitive and timeless human impulse to possess through killing and to kill through possession. The lives of two railwaymen on the Paris-to-Le-Havre line are fatally entwined by their love for the same woman in this shocking account of brutal violence, greed, revenge, and repression. In the wider cast of Zola’s characters, too, we see just how close to the surface of civilization the beast within us lurks.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2021 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.

Murderers and the utterly corrupt

Thus gripping novel abounds with truly awful ppl doing awful things, all against a backdrop of train culture.

Compelling storytelling with bits of Ultraviolence

I've fallen in love with Zola, he transports you to an unfamiliar time and place (19th Century France) that you didn't think would be compelling, but OMG it is!
Tons of violence and sex that does NOT feel gratuitous. Zola was fearless in describing the dark side of human nature, and the horrible appetites for destruction he paints, alas, are true to life, even in our modern times of 2023.

great writing, powerful story

I forced myself to read this for book club. It's top notch writing and the reader is A+++++. Fabulous. The problem is that I didn't like that everyone on the planet has murder on the mind. I didn't particularly want to be in the mind of a murderer. There's not a single person who is actually ethical. I know unethical people exist, but so do ethical people. Zola was maybe a troubled soul. Great ending which I found satisfying and powerful, given the premise of the story.

Brilliant

This is something of a thriller: romance, murder, theft, and more. Zola's "beast" is both the animal in man and the beasts man has created: machines, here embodied by the train. Zola often speaks of modernity as a machine and he certainly does that here. I think this is a more subtle novel that reflects the cruelty of modernity underneath layers of plot. Zola is not always so subtle but I think he is here, at least more than usual. Highly recommend!