The Demonologist
A Novel
-
- € 15,99
Beschrijving uitgever
Fans of The Historian won’t be able to put down this spellbinding literary horror story in which a Columbia professor must use his knowledge of demonic mythology to rescue his daughter from the Underworld.
Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed.
That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively accepts the Thin Woman’s invitation to Venice, bringing along his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess. His daughter has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows too well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home. But what happens in Venice will change everything.
At the address provided by the Thin Woman, David finds a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane. But when the man speaks clearly in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son—words that have left scars, and a mystery, behind—he’s forced to confront his skepticism. Is this man truly possessed?
When David rushes back to the hotel, he discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me.
What follows is an unimaginable journey for David, from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A mesmerizing and melancholy narrative voice lends chilling credibility to this exceptional supernatural thriller. Milton scholar David Ullman, who teaches English literature at Columbia, believes that loneliness, each person's going like Adam and Eve "their solitary way," is the real theme of Paradise Lost. Outside of work, the professor has a failed marriage and a beloved 11-year-old daughter, Tess. One day, a "worryingly thin" woman with a generic European accent shows up at his campus office with an unusual offer. The woman, who says she represents a client "who demands discretion above all," will pay Ullman a sum a third larger than his annual salary if he will travel immediately to Venice to observe a "phenomenon" that his expertise on demons qualifies him to assess. Ullman protests that he doesn't believe in demons, but in the end, accompanied by Tess, he goes to Venice, where tragedy ensues. Pyper (Lost Girl) is especially gifted at plausibly anthropomorphizing inanimate objects to creepy effect. A standard rural mailbox is transformed into "a stooped figure, lurching after me, its mouth wide in a scream"; a book becomes "a mouth gasping for air."
