13 h 26 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 13 h 26 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Paris tears down its old streets, and one hungry family turns the wreckage into wealth, display, and desire.
In Émile Zola’s The Rush for the Spoil, Aristide Saccard sees a fortune in a city under demolition. Old lanes vanish and wide boulevards open. With inside knowledge and a ruthless appetite, he buys and sells houses marked for destruction. In Second Empire Paris, rebuilding offers rich rewards to those ready to seize them.
His young wife, Renée, lives among silk, jewels, velvet, and hothouse flowers, yet searches for stronger feeling. His son Maxime drifts toward easy pleasure. As money pours through their household, Zola brings the hunger for land, clothes, and sensation into sharp focus. The appetite reshaping Paris also threatens to pull this family apart.
What you’ll discover
- A city carved apart Follow the vanished lanes and new boulevards where Saccard turns demolition into opportunity.
- Luxury without peace Meet Renée, surrounded by costly beauty but bored and hungry for feeling.
- Heat behind the glass Enter the warm, damp greenhouse where tropical plants fill Zola’s sensuous pages.
- The glitter of display Watch carriages parade through the Bois de Boulogne as the new Paris shows itself off.
- Hunger beneath the surface Explore Zola’s naturalism, where setting and heredity shape lives driven by money and pleasure.
Who will love it
For readers who love social panoramas, stories of money and ambition, and nineteenth century Paris. It also welcomes anyone curious about Zola’s portraits of greed, desire and family life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The new Paris parades in the Bois
- A hungry man arrives with a new name
- Speculators carve up the city
- Renée lives for dresses and display
- The hothouse where feeling grows wild
- A masquerade ball and a living picture
- Debts mount and a marriage is planned
- What the book says about greed and desire
- How Zola tells it with colour and heat
Who’s who
- Aristide SaccardA schemer who changes his name and uses inside knowledge of the city's rebuilding to chase a fortune.
- RenéeSaccard's young wife, rich in dresses and bored in spirit, who spends without limit while searching for strong feeling.
- MaximeSaccard's son, a soft and idle young man who drifts toward whatever is easy and pleasant.
- SidonieSaccard's sister, a go-between who arranges deals and marriages for a fee.
- Louise de MareuilA small, clever heiress with a large dowry, whom Saccard sees as a fresh source of money.
- LarsonneauAn agent who helps Saccard work the buying and selling of houses marked for demolition.
- WormsThe fashionable tailor whose gowns dress Renée and whose growing bills threaten her.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 13 h 26 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 12 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Die Beute in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Die Beute
by Émile Zola · 1871
Aristide Saccard chases a fortune through the rebuilding of Paris as the same hunger pulls his family apart.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Rush for the Spoil is a novel by Émile Zola, first published in book form in 1872 after appearing in a newspaper in 1871. It is the second book in his Rougon-Macquart cycle, twenty novels that follow one family through the years of the Second Empire under Napoleon III.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The new Paris parades in the Bois
The novel opens on a fine afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne, the great park at the western edge of Paris. Carriages roll along the avenues in a slow, glittering line. Inside one of them sit Renée and her stepson Maxime, returning from the fashionable hour of display. Zola uses this ride to show a society that lives to be seen.
The details matter. The women wear costly dresses and the horses are groomed to shine. People bow, glance and judge, and every passing carriage is a small announcement of wealth. Renée is bored in the middle of all this splendour, and she looks for something she cannot name.
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What is The Rush for the Spoil about?
It follows the speculator Aristide Saccard, his wife Renée and his son Maxime in Paris under Napoleon III. Saccard grows rich from the rebuilding of the city, while his household sinks into debt, display and forbidden desire.
What does La Curée mean?
In hunting, the curée is the moment when the hounds are given their share of the killed animal. Zola uses the word for speculators tearing at the body of old Paris as it is rebuilt.
Is La Curée part of the Rougon-Macquart series?
Yes, it is the second of the twenty Rougon-Macquart novels. The series follows one family through the Second Empire, and Aristide Saccard is a member of the Rougon branch who later returns in other books.
The author
Émile Zola
1840–1902 · French novelist
Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, and poet. He was born in Paris, grew up in Aix-en-Provence, and later lived in Paris and Médan. He wrote Thérèse Raquin (1867), Nana (1880), and Germinal (1885). His twenty-novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart, appeared between 1871 and 1893.
More by Émile Zola
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