Claude Seignolle – författare

Spurned lovers return from the grave to haunt theirpartners, ghost ships materialise on the sea, men's hands take on a life oftheir own... Welcome to the unsettling world of the French weird. Though the development of the weird tale in Franceoriginally drew on Gothic traditions in Germany, it soon became more heavilyinfluenced by the emerging romantic movement. French weird tales often includeelements of fable and romance, but they're just as likely to go to the otherextreme in chilling contes cruels. The stories in this anthology follow theevolution of the weird from the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution right throughto the end of the twentieth century. They're stories influenced by, and to someextent seeking to justify, civil and political unrest and how people coped withconstant change and rebellion, seeking some solace amongst the chaos.

Widely regarded as Seignolle’s masterpiece, The Unwelcome take the reader to the rural Sologne region of a hundred years ago, when night was terrifying and a lingering scent of witchcraft was just as acceptable to the people in its hamlets as any modern scientific advances. Against this eerie backdrop, sixteen-year-old Jeanne is out of control – burning hayricks and playing jealous lovers off against each other with terrible consequences – but can she really be blamed for her behaviour when a sense of evil seems to linger around her family like morning mist over the cursed local marsh?The answer lies in a discovery made by her father, Moarc’h, a generation before, when he dug the ceramic head of a pagan statue from a plough furrow and installed it at the family farm. Dreadful things happened then; just as dreadful things are happening now. And as the ghosts of the past both literally and figuratively descend on the descendants of Moarc’h, the horrors that seem to swirl around Jeanne become impossible to ignore.