Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, playwright and journalist, and the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism. He was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 known collectively as Les Rougon-Macquart, examining two branches of a family - the respectable Rougons and the disreputable Macquarts - over five generations. This novel, the 2nd in the series first published in the original French in 1872, is set against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and '60s offering an insight into the world of property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy nouveau riche of the Second Empire. The literal meaning of the French title La Curee is the portion of game thrown to the dogs after a hunt and has been rendered as The Kill in some English translations of the work. Reprinted from an unabridged translation of 1886 made from the 34th French edition, with 12 illustrations.