Quixotic Book Club of New York City

We read the first novel of Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart together in the broad group, and many enjoyed it so much, that we created a francophile offshoot group to read all 20 of Zola's novels in this series over 2-years.
https://www.meetup.com/les-deux-magots/

We return to Zola in Quixotic and tackle a stand-alone novel, Thérèse Raquin. This story is a sinister tale of adultery and murder in everyday nineteenth century Paris. Thérèse Raquin is a relatively short, 200-page read and will suit us well after a giant effort with Dostoevsky.

This translation by Andrew Rothwell (Oxford World's Classics) is recommended:

https://a.co/d/8vOhKCm

Our second novel in a row about a French Thérèse.

Thérèse Desqueyroux walks free from court, quitted of attempting to poison her husband. As she returns to the gloomy forests of her home, a dark plot unfolds about a woman trapped by provincial life.

Mauriac had a bitter dispute with Albert Camus immediately following the Liberation of France. At that time, Camus edited the Resistance paper Combat (thereafter an overt daily, until 1947), while Mauriac wrote a column for Le Figaro. Camus said newly liberated France should purge all Nazi collaborator elements, but Mauriac warned that such disputes should be set aside in the interests of national reconciliation. Mauriac also doubted that justice would be impartial or dispassionate, given the emotional turmoil of the Liberation. Despite having been viciously criticised by Robert Brasillach, he campaigned against his execution.

Mauriac was opposed to French rule in Vietnam, and strongly condemned the use of torture by the French army in Algeria.
In 1952, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life"

Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927) is available in a Penguin Classics modern translation by Gerard Hopkins. The novel is a short but dense read.

https://a.co/d/9O1CSMX