The EmpusiumA Health Resort Horror Story

In general one should recognise that with regard to therapy, a sojourn in places including Merano in the Tyrol, Görbersdorf in Silesia, or Davos in Switzerland (modeled on Görbersdorf) is considered the most effective cure to date.

Once awake, Wojnicz immediately set about writing a message to his father to reassure him. It was a matter of a few simple words, yet he didn’t find it easy; his forearm felt numb and weak. So he focused all his attention on his hand, as it ran the pencil tip across a sheet of cream-colored paper in a leather-bound notebook. We find this movement fascinating, we like it. It reminds us of the winding lines and spiral flourishes that earthworms bore underground, and that weevils carve into tree trunks.

I can console you, gentlemen. Scientific research has demonstrated that the female brain functions entirely differently, and even has a different structure,” said Walter Frommer. “Above all it is a question of size. and also the convexity of different spheres. Where the will is located in men, in women we have desire. Where men have an understanding of numbers and structures in general, in women there is motherhood —

The novel’s greatest strength was its balance between the classic horror tropes of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and the literary magnificence of Flights that Tokarczuk is known for.

Wojnicz himself is a perfect character to carry this story through its narrative.

A magnificently haunting portrayal of health, death, and all that comes in between, The Empusium is one of Tokarczuk’s best works to date.

The resort's eerie atmosphere is palpable from the first page

The characters' struggles add layers of complexity to the narrative

The novel's strength lies in its ability to evoke a sense of dread and curiosity

The extreme misogyny of the guesthouse gentlemen runs like a vein of poison through “The Empusium

Something is not right in Görbersdorf. Wojnicz makes a friend at the guesthouse, a seriously ill young aesthete who confides in him the terrible secret of the place. Every year around the first full moon in November, a man, sometimes two, is torn to pieces in the forest: “The landscape takes its sacrifice and kills a man.

He becomes a low-status member of a pack, taken to eat luridly unpleasant local delicacies such as a noodle dish made with parasitic ribbon worms and made to listen to his companions pontificating endlessly about male superiority.