The Empusium : A Health Resort Horror Story
Author(s): Olga Tokarczuk (Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
General Fiction | Summer Reading Guide 2024/25
The Nobel Prize-winner's latest work is a riveting, humorous tale of mystery that takes misogyny to task.
In September 1913, Mieczyslaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at 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? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
But disturbing events are happening in the guesthouse and its surroundings. Someone-or something-seems to be infiltrating their world. As our student attempts to decipher the sinister forces at work, little does he realise they have already chosen their next target.
As in her acclaimed novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Tokarczuk blends horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
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‘Olga Tokarczuk is inspired by maps and a perspective from above, which tends to make her microcosmos a mirror of macrocosmos. She constructs her novels in a tension between cultural opposites: nature versus culture, reason versus madness, male versus female, home versus alienation. Her magnum opus so far is the historical novel The Books of Jacob, portraying the eighteenth-century mystic and sect leader Jacob Frank. The work also gives us a remarkably rich panorama of an almost neglected chapter in European history.’
— 2018 Nobel Committee for Literature
‘A magnificent writer.’
— Svetlana Alexievich
‘A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald.’
— Annie Proulx
‘One among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century.’
— The Economist
‘Tokarczuk’s latest work reckons with some of the major intellectual questions of the 20th century while simultaneously spinning a mysterious – and spooky – web of intrigue and suspense. A crucial addition to Tokarczuk’s oeuvre.’
— Kirkus, starred review
‘Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium is a richly entertaining, captivating and thought-provoking novel. Despite its acute engagement with The Magic Mountain it’s more Hoffmann than Mann, which works in its favour.’
— David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On
General Fields
- :
- : The Text Publishing Company
- : Text Publishing
- : 21 September 2024
- : books
Special Fields
- : Paperback
- : Olga Tokarczuk (Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)