Therese Raquin is one of the most famous realistic novels of Zola, and is a tale of adultery and murder among the lower classes of Parisian society of the nineteenth century. Located in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a drab haberdashery shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells of how the heroine and her lover, Laurent, kill her husband, Camille, but are subsequently haunted by visions of the dead preventing the enjoyment of the fruits of their crime.