The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story (Penguin Publishing Group) - Softcover

Tokarczuk, Olga

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593712951 ISBN 13: 9780593712955

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Synopsis

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 this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593712951
• ISBN 13: 9780593712955
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320