If you pay her time and attention, Tokarczuk will reward you hand over fist here to the degree that you might feel it's being written by your very own mind as you grit your teeth and shout through the final 30 pages, both afraid & overjoyed like only a truly thrilling writer can induce. One to read & reread, it marries her previous work's interests all while maybe being the best novel of the year.
— Grady
I was scared to finish this book. The suspense was daunting. The twists were endless. I was as naive as the main character whom I grew so attached to I worried about him as if he were real. An extremely smart book, it felt like I was holding a whole galaxy in my hands. Mystical and Real, this book is thick with wonderings.
— Camille
October 2024 Indie Next List
“The Empusium is a sardonic tale that holds nothing back, taking institutional misogyny to task in a world on the brink of World War I. Tokarczuk brings all her brilliance and creates a poignant narrative that’s eerily reminiscent of modern day.”
— Dominic Smith, Underbrush Books, Rogers, AR
Description
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.
About the Author
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.
Praise For…
Praise for The Empusium:
“Deft and disturbing. . . In Antonia Lloyd-Jones’s crisp translation, Tokarczuk tells a folk horror story with a deceptively light and knowing tone. . . elegant and genuinely unsettling.”—Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Book Review “Slippery, interesting, and impish . . . easy to follow, yet difficult to fathom … cannily constructed and uncompromisingly surreal. . . .By jauntily cleaving to Mann’s text while also inverting it, Tokarczuk has created a narrative in which the parable sits like a temperamental bolt of electricity in the historical orbit of the European novel.”—The Nation
“Pulling from folktales, mythology, art, and literature, Tokarczuk’s novel spins a story that feels eerily familiar and yet totally new… Just when you think you have this novel in your sight, it shimmers into something else entirely.” —The Atlantic
“A marvelous reframing of The Magic Mountain … [that] can be enjoyed — and may even be more enjoyable — on its own merits … Lloyd-Jones’s uniformly excellent translation of The Empusium is a much breezier read." —Boston Globe
“Tokarczuk masterfully maps out a new kind of horror story, one that weaves together elements of folklore and feminist allegory.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“In Tokarczuk’s hands, the staid genre of the bildungsroman erupts with sinister possibility…. A grand fantasy of revenge …taut, febrile.”—Washington Post
“A novel that in Tokarczuk’s dexterous hands transcends its own limits, further cementing the Nobel laureate as one of the most original storytellers of our age. Equipped with only our measly five senses, it leaves us questioning — just like her characters — what might be hiding in plain sight.”—Financial Times
“A magnificently haunting portrayal of health, death, and all that comes in between, The Empusium is one of Tokarczuk’s best works to date.” —Chicago Review of Books
"An odd, fascinating book—a blackly serious joke—from an author of great daring and intelligence…. What stands out most is the philosophical conflict it stages between rationality and folk belief. This is the thread that runs through all of Ms. Tokarczuk’s wildly various books.”—Wall Street Journal
“A mischievous fairy tale about transformation, emotion and ambiguity…Tokarczuk keeps the suspense at a low boil throughout, balancing moments of terror and revulsion... Until the horror and the beauty can no longer be contained, that is, and erupt into the novel’s utterly sublime conclusion. As ever, Tokarczuk’s prose — and Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ glorious translation … — will knock the wind out of you.… The Empusium asks: If bigotry and violence make up the bedrock of our cultural traditions, can we still teach ourselves new ways of seeing and thinking? If we squint hard enough, can we find the women and other unpersons hidden in the past — and the present?”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Fiercely feminist … Tokarczuk’s erudite, subversive, and delightfully zany novel challenges us … to look hard at what’s being said and done around us, especially things we might prefer not to have to witness."—Book Forum
“This rich gothic novel set in 1913 is certainly haunted, but also rife with social commentary on gender dysphoria, inequality, and prejudice. Readers will come for the eerie atmosphere but stay for the searing critique of society's tendency to discard its most vulnerable if it means maintaining a semblance of safety.”—Booklist
“The Polish Nobel winner ladles up a deliciously creepy revenge tale in this satirical spin on Thomas Mann’s 100-year-old masterpiece The Magic Mountain.”—The Guardian “Olga Tokarczuk’s deft, dark satirical wit is on full display in The Empusium, which challenges the rigid patriarchal world of pre-WWI Europe with horror and humor.”—BookPage
“The gothic elements keep the blood stirring.”—Library Journal
“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
“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.” —Publishers Weekly
“Historical fiction threaded through with a playful kind of literary horror, The Empusium . . . is in part a wry response to Thomas Mann’s classic The Magic Mountain, blending high philosophy with dark comedy, strange folklore, and hallucinogenic liquors.”—Goodreads, “Most Anticipated Boos of the Fall”
“The Empusium is a sardonic tale that holds nothing back, taking institutional misogyny to task in a world on the brink of World War I. Tokarczuk brings all her brilliance and creates a poignant narrative that’s eerily reminiscent of modern day.”