Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Professor Snape—ahem, we mean, Alan Rickman—appears in the BBC three-part mini-series Thérèse Raquin as Vidal. Who in the world is Vidal, you ask? Laurent's artist friend, who is unnamed in the novel.
Author Emile Zola is buried at the Panthéon in Paris, where he shares a crypt with two other famous French writers: Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.
Six years after the publication of Thérèse Raquin, Zola adapted the novel into a four-act play. The play first appeared on stage in 1873.
People have compared François in Thérèse Raquin to the cat in Manet's painting Olympia. Manet and Zola were close friends—Manet even painted a portrait of the writer.