The Empusium
A Health Resort Horror Story
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- 9,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the nearby highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone – or something – seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.
A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nobel Prize winner Tokarczuk (The Books of Jacob) delivers the disarming tale of a Silesian tuberculosis ward and a series of mysterious deaths in the surrounding countryside. Mieczysław Wojnicz, a frail engineering student, has been sent to the ward in 1913 to convalesce. While awaiting a room in the main facility, he chats in the guesthouse with a group of fellow patients, whose misogynistic views reflect the period's prevailing attitudes. Tokarczuk places the modern institution against a rural backdrop where locals remain enthralled by ancient folk superstitions, and she explores this dissonance as Wojnicz learns of the witch trials that purportedly drove some women into the wilderness centuries earlier and gave rise to legends of female shape-shifters. Each November, the bodies of mutilated men are recovered from the woods, and hikers stumble upon Tuntschi, female dolls fashioned from natural materials to gratify sex-starved itinerant laborers. At the novel's crisis point, Wojnicz uncovers a chilling connection between the legend and the sanatorium. Tokarczuk concocts a potent blend of horror tropes and literary references (Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann) as she realizes the potential of her tale's uncommon setting—a community set apart by the omnipresence of sickness and death, where the rules of civilized propriety give way to more fantastic possibilities. Readers will find much to savor.
