Notes

engfre
liv, 405 pages.
First published in French in 1890 as La Bete humaine.
Summary: Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his lovely young wife's past. The only way he can rest is by forcing her to help him murder the man involved, but there is a witness - Jacques Lantier, a fellow railway employee. Jacques, meanwhile, must contend with his own terrible impulses, for every time he sees a women he feels an overwhelming desire to kill. In the company of Roubaud's wife, Severine, he finds peace briefly, yet his feelings for her soon bring disastrous consequences. The novel is set at the end of the Second Empire, when French society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new railways and locomotives it was building.
Translated from the French.
Penguin classics.