Mar
17
6:30pm
Litfest International Fiction Online Book Club – The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
By Lancaster Litfest
For this special edition of the Litfest International Fiction Book Club we are delighted to welcome back Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the translator of Nobel Prize Laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s earlier novel Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead.
In September 1913, a young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, 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.
A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
Olga Tokarczuk is the author of nine novels, three short story collections and has been translated into more than fifty languages. Her novel Flights won the 2018 International Booker Prize, in Jennifer Croft’s translation. She is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, as well as crime fiction, poetry and children’s books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize.
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