The Necrophiliac

(Paperback, No Edition)

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Description

For more than three decades, Lucien - one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel - has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. This, the first English translation of Wittkop's notorious novel, introduces English readers to a masterpiece of French literature. Like the best writings of Edgar Allen Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop's prose goes far beyond gothic horror to explore the melancholy of the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.

Reviews

This is a masterpiece. The Guardian
You shouldnt pass up this opportunity to read a loving account of a man who loves the dead as few others can or would. The City Book Review
The Necrophiliac is a disturbing little book about ephemeral beauty and impossible love. The beauty of the language coupled with the disturbing subject matter makes for a bizarre, amoral and elliptical journey of a demented individual. Telegraph Journal
[S]imultaneously beautiful and grotesque Even now, nearly 40 years after its initial publication, it feels a bit taboo to read it. Here at last, is a boundary that few dare cross, an element of the macabre that has not been played out in a thousand similar iterations already, and its been kept secret from me by the barrier of language. Rue Morgue
The thrills here are anything but cheap, and the pleasure the reader derives is more cerebral than carnal. MAKE Journal

Author Bio

Born in 1920 in Nantes, Gabrielle Wittkop is the author of several novels, including La Mort de C., Srnissime assassinat, and la Marchande denfants, as well as numerous poems and short stories. She died in 2002 in Frankfurt where she had lived for several decades. Don Bapst is an award-winning filmmaker and the author of three novels, including The Hanged Man and danger@liaisons.com.