The empusium : a health resort horror story

Title:

Author:

Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962- author.

Summary:

"September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone--or something--seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize, as he tries 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, with signature boldness, inventiveness, humor, and bravura." -- Amazon

General Note:

Translation of: Empuzjon.

"Originally published in Poland as Empuzjon, by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krakow, in 2022." -- title verso

Edition:

First United States edition.

Physical Description:

300 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Genre:

Subject Term:

Health resorts -- Fiction.

Sanatoriums -- Fiction.

Tuberculosis -- Patients -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Poland -- Fiction.

Sokołowsko (Poland) -- Fiction.

Author(s):

Lloyd-Jones, Antonia,

Publisher:

Riverhead Books,

Publication Date:

2024

ISBN:

9780593712948

9780593854082

Publication Information:

New York : Riverhead Books, 2024.

Call Number:

TOKARCZUK

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003754663	New Adult Fiction	TOKARCZUK Olga	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER!

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

"A folk horror story with a deceptively light and knowing tone ... elegant and genuinely unsettling." - The New York Times Book Review

The Nobel Prize winner's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas

September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone--or something--seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize, as he tries 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, with signature boldness, inventiveness, humor, and bravura.

Author Notes

Olga Tokarczuk is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker International Prize, among many other honors. She is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, two collections of essays, and a children's book; her work has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (Sept.)