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 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.
“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.”