A Dark Stranger

<p><p>A surreal, nouveau-Gothic story of Death in a 1920s seaside hotel<p> <p>From the moment he arrives at an elegant seaside hotel with his lover, Allan unsettles and obsesses the other guests. Elusive, equivocal, beautiful, he lives, gambles, swims and dances with a strange fierceness that they find intoxicating. Soon he even haunts their dreams.</p>
<p>One by one, each guest is fatally drawn to Allan. And, as the hazy August heat fades and summer comes to an end, they gravitate towards self-destruction.</p>
<p>Rich, lushly poetic, A Dark Stranger is a dreamlike portrayal of lives lived on the edge of the abyss.</p>
<p>Julien Gracq (1910-2007) taught history and geography in various lycées. A close friend of André Breton, his work was inspired by German Romanticism, and combines startling imagery with a rich, precise metre.</p>
<p>Staunchly avoiding the French literary scene-he refused the Prix Goncourt in 1951-he is one of the few authors to have been published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade during his lifetime. He died in 2007 aged 97.</p>
<p>Julien Gracq's Château d'Argol is also available from Pushkin Press..</p></p>