
It was nearly dark in the cloisters; Lally looked up at the boar’s head, grotesque in the dimness. “A strange thing to carve in a Christian church,” he thought.
Following a romantic scandal in the Duke’s court, Lally Duchene is dismissed to a new post at a monastery turned asylum nestled in the wine country of the Rhineland. Unphased by local superstitions about ghosts and nixies in the forests, his days slip by in a haze.
But something is stirring in this woodland idyll. Among the patients is a woman possessing an otherworldly aura. Phantasms disturb the night, and the vestiges of a sinister paganism leer from beneath holy facades. As the wine harvest approaches and Lally’s past catches up with him at the monastery, eternal forces are awakening—and a carnage of ancient rites draws near.
First published in 1921, this full-bodied tale of mythical weirdness in nineteenth-century Germany is a vintage to be savoured.
Publication date: 21/11/2024
Author: Marjorie Bowen, with an introduction by Michael Dirda
Brand: British Library Publishing
Number of pages: 304
Binding: Paperback
Dimensions: 190 x 130 mm
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