The Monomaniac (La bête humaine) by Émile Zola

"The Monomaniac (La bête humaine)" by Émile Zola is a novel published in 1890. This psychological thriller follows Jacques Lantier, a railway engine driver plagued by hereditary madness that transforms his desires into violent urges against women. Set among railway workers operating the Paris-Le Havre line in the late 1860s, the story weaves together murder, obsession, and betrayal. When Lantier witnesses a killing on a passing train, he becomes entangled with the perpetrators—leading to a passionate affair and a web of deadly consequences that culminate in tragedy. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Read or download for free

For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide

Reading Options Url Size
Read now! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.html.images 830 kB
EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.epub3.images 482 kB
EPUB (older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.epub.images 493 kB
EPUB (no images, older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.epub.noimages 382 kB
Kindle https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.kf8.images 714 kB
older Kindles https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.kindle.images 663 kB
Plain Text UTF-8 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57038.txt.utf-8 784 kB
Download HTML (zip) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/57038/pg57038-h.zip 447 kB
There may be more files related to this item.

About this eBook

Author Zola, Émile, 1840-1902
Translator Vizetelly, Edward
Title The Monomaniac (La bête humaine)
Note Wikipedia page about this book: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_B%C3%AAte_humaine
Credits Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature
(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)
Reading Level Reading ease score: 78.5 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read.
Language English
LoC Class PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Subject French fiction -- Translations into English
Category Text
EBook-No. 57038
Release Date
Most Recently Updated Nov 22, 2021
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 568 downloads in the last 30 days.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!