Le rêve is the sixteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It is about an orphan girl who falls in love with a nobleman, and is set in the years 1860–1869.

Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire, it follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852–1870) and is one of the most prominent works of the French naturalism literary movement.