La Bête Humaine

Émile Zola · 1840–1902 · France

Originally La Bête Humaine (French)

Why it matters

A railway engineer carries a hereditary compulsion to kill inside him like a fault in the family blood, and a murder investigation exposes it: Zola's fastest, darkest Rougon-Macquart volume, part crime novel, part study of inherited violence.

At a glance

Interweaves a murder plot with dense technical railway detail and multiple psychologies.