The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot
His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
On a stormy night in 1813, a doctor is called to the aid of two prostitutes in childbirth. To one is born a healthy girl, Henriette, to the other, what can only be described as a monster: a boy, Hercules, deaf-mute and hideously deformed, and with the power to read minds.
As he tells the story of Hercules' bizarre and colourful life, which leads him from the bordello of his birth to a travelling freak show and then a Jesuit monastery and an asylum, Vallgren paints a magical picture of nineteenth-century Europe. This picaresque fable is filled with curiosities but is, at its heart, an extraordinary and unforgettable love story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As its subtitle hints, Swedish author Vallgren's weirdly compelling first novel to be translated Stateside summons a world of light and dark, beauty and deformation. Set in the early 1800s, the story follows Hercule Barfuss, who is born deaf, dumb and grotesquely misshapen, with a "dark red cavity" for a face, in a German whorehouse. But he has a gentle, intelligent nature and a budding gift of telepathy, which reveals people's innermost, unacknowledged desires. Reared in the brothel, Hercule forms a deep bond with a beautiful girl, Henriette Vogel, who was born there the same night he was. After the loving pair is tragically separated at age 10, Hercule traverses Europe living in a Jesuit monastery, an asylum and with a traveling freak show persecuted everywhere as he seeks out Henriette. Along with Hercule's relentless search for Henriette, it is a sadistic cardinal's pursuit of Hercule ("a demon") that propels the novel. The book unravels, though, when Hercule, warped by hardship, embarks on a vengeful rampage.
