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