The Empusium

Tokarczuks fiction is built on filtering fragments of the past people, stories, myths, orthodoxies through a contemporary lens. The Empusium is much less a debate of ideas than a study of our perception and the limits of sensory experience. Reality, or rather its elusiveness, preoccupies much of Tokarczuks work, which frequently blends genres as a way to get closer to, if not at, whats true. Grotesque sexism aside, there is spectacular humour to these scenes as the grandeur of their self-image is so elegantly undermined by the narrators description of them. This too is a novel that in Tokarczuks dexterous hands transcends its own limits, further cementing the Nobel laureate as one of the most original storytellers of our age. Matthew Janney, Financial Times Despite the large (if mischievous) debt to The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk makes this novel all her own with her idiosyncratic blend of registers and genres. She is both a collagist and a doodler, a freewheeling improvisator taking her narrative line for a gloriously erratic walk. In Lloyd-Joness poised translation, Tokarczuks puckishness gleams brightly. The best passages in this new novel are weird, lyrical rhapsodies describing the natural world through the all-seeing eyes of those mysteriously plural narrators. Happily, all the various unlikely strands come together in the closing chapters. The eerily majestic finale is haunting, cathartic and gleeful a zany confection that could only have come from this unpredictable, unique writer. Claire Lowdon, Times Literary Supplement Deft and disturbing. In Antonia Lloyd-Joness crisp translation, Tokarczuk tells a folk horror story with a deceptively light and knowing tone elegant and genuinely unsettling. Hari Kunzru, New York Times The book challenges you to think while still being slyly funny [and] theres also a compelling plot to pull us along. There are three plot-twisting surprises, one that I guessed early on, one I was wrong about and one that floored me. Tokarczuk is a writer of definite views, many of which I disagree with, but this is clever, intelligent stuff, touched with genius. David Mills, The Times The Nobel Prize-winning novelist is exceptionally adept at blending the high-minded sanctimoniousness of the sanatorium with the ever-present threat and legacy of violence. Tokarczuks outstanding novel is a striking reaffirmation of literatures genius for nuance in a world darkened by murderous polarities. Michael Cronin, Irish Times The tension builds to a wild night of collective madness, a drunken witches sabbath. And death will come for someone. Theres an almost Borgesian quality to the resolution. But remember, this is Tokarczuk. Nothing is ever quite as it seems. Lee Langley, Spectator Its an odd, fascinating book a blackly serious joke from an author of great daring and intelligence. The writing, in a cultivated translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, shares the easygoing gait and twinkling irony of Manns novel.... It makes for absorbing if often mystifying reading, but what stands out most is the philosophical conflict it stages between rationality and folk belief. Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal From mystery drinks and deaths to commentary upon religion and gender, this book is the literary horror story that eagerly awaits your autumn reading list. A magnificently haunting portrayal of health, death, and all that comes in between, The Empusium is one of Tokarczuks best works to date. Madeline Schultz, Chicago Review of Books The Nobel Laureates bloody and moody fairy tale will blow your mind. 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 novels utter

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 Crofts translation. She is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Empusium is her fourth novel to appear in English with Fitzcarraldo Editions.