Classics cornerEmile ZolaReviewZola's 1867 tale of murderous lovers is a work of enduring fascination, says Anna Winter

Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1867) is a story of lust, madness and destruction set within the dingy backstreets of Paris. The eponymous protagonist – a repressed and silently resentful young woman – is married off according to her aunt's wishes to her sickly cousin Camille. When Thérèse meets Camille's robust and earthy friend Laurent, a turbulent passion is unleashed that drives them ultimately to violence and murder.

In his preface to the second edition, Zola outlined the tenets of his naturalist approach to writing and defended his work against contemporary accusations of "putrid" obscenity. The novel, he claimed, is a kind of scientific study, recording the actions of "human animals" whose behaviour is entirely determined by "temperament" – a doctrine derived from the medieval idea of the four "humours". Laurent's "sanguine" disposition is opposed to Thérèse's "nervous" temperament; both disintegrate into neurosis.

Yet the novel goes far beyond outmoded psychological concepts. For all Zola's claims of authorial objectivity, what makes the work so striking is the inclusion of the uncanny and symbolic. The enigmatic cat François is a constant observer of the action and his "diabolical" gaze scrutinises the lovers as they descend through lust to hysteria and despair. Zola also invests the Seine with a sinister significance that heightens the claustrophobic atmosphere. Running murkily through every setting, it becomes the scene of murder, engulfing Camille and spewing him out on to the morgue slab as a "heap of decayed flesh… spotted with repulsive blotches, the feet were falling off".

Robin Buss's translation preserves the unflinching precision of Zola's prose. By merging elements of the gothic and tragic with a study of petit-bourgeois banality, Zola created a work of enduring fascination.

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