Collected's 24in24 - Frankie recommends... The Empusium - Olga Tokarczuk

Frankie recommends... A weird and uncanny resort mystery, where no one's story can be trusted. Told thorugh lucid description, this is as much a roaring success for it's translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones as well as Olga Tokarczuk. The atmosphere was tense and stickily palpable, and the dread of Wojnicz, a man in search of a cure, seems to infect you from the very first page. A brilliant brilliant book that will have you pulling your collar and checking behind you for a long time afterwards! What is going on at the resort...?

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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. 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, blending horror story, comedy, folklore and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.