The Human Beast

ORIGINAL EDITION. One of the numbered copies on Holland paper, the only paper after 30 Japon copies.

Terrible seventeenth volume of the Rougon-Macquart series: murders, rapes, suicides, battered women, adulteries, poisonings, petty cash, political calculations—the perfect ultra-dark portrait from a novelist " weary of [his] series" who wishes to conclude it quickly. Jacques Lantier is a born criminal, except that, until now, he has committed no crime; everything exists in potential in his mind, heated to white-hot by repressed impulses that only flesh excites, which distinguishes him from Raskolnikov, an ideological criminal. Crime and Punishmentwas translated in 1884; Zola was fascinated by the work. Jacques Lantier, however, does not know of the Übermensch's existence; he is simply overwhelmed by his crime-prone heredity as the son of Gervaise and that rogue Lantier.