La jauría

At the age of twenty-eight, reading The Human Comedy led Émile Zola to conceive the Rougon-Macquart novel cycle project, starting it with two novels: La fortuna de los Rougon and La jauría. In the latter, set in the Paris of Baron Haussmann's urban revolution, Aristide Rougon triumphs in real estate speculation and his son Maxime, a young Narcissus, becomes a fashionable gallant. At her side, only Renée, Maxime's stepmother, who relives the tragedy of Phaedra in her incestuous love, will understand the myth of money and its caustic effect of boredom and dehumanization.