This was a very hefty book to dive into, and I didn’t realise that it was a continuation of a previous story until I was too deep into the book and a little confused. The writing was very atmospheric but I couldn’t connect to any of the characters nor plot points, which is a shame!

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz arrives at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen in Görbersdorf (in what is now western Poland), in order to receive treatment for tuberculosis from the neighbouring sanatorium. Here, the impressionable young Wojnicz finds himself repeatedly being warned - about the dangers of women, the dangers of his illness, and the dangers of the landscape which has seen so much death - but, uneasy in his new surroundings, Wojnicz hardly knows which warnings he ought to heed...

The Empusium revisits the premise of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which likewise focuses on a naïve young man who finds himself in a sanatorium as the world unknowingly marches towards war, but the story Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) tells is very much her own. At one point, Thilo, one of Wojnicz's fellow boarders and patients, shows him a painting he thinks shows a familiar scene, until he changes his perspective and reveals something much more interesting and disturbing. It feels like the perfect metaphor for this book, which uses a wealth of literary allusions (and I'm sure I missed plenty of them) to poke fun at the misogynistic views of its male characters, and to reveal the very real darkness lurking behind its setting.

I loved the way Tokarczuk plays around with the function of the narrator in The Empusium, and particularly how this plays into the uneasy feeling Wojnicz has, in the guesthouse, of being watched. I also appreciated Tokarczuk's sly digs at the absence of women in so many texts, although I personally found some of her commentary a little heavy-handed. I also couldn't help but compare The Empusium with The Magic Mountain, which is probably unfair, and while I think the two texts work well in conversation, I also think readers not familiar with Mann might fare better reading The Empusium with fewer expectations. Ultimately, The Empusium was a three-star, rather than a four-star, read for me because I found it a bit of a drag. It just didn't grab my attention until near the end, as the story seemed to move along without very much happening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for an advance copy. The Empusium is out on 26 September.

“And so it went–first a declamation by August, then another tirade about the collapse of civilization from Lukas, followed by some incomprehensible allusions made by Frommer, until the disputants’ tongues were slowed by the effect of Schwärmerei and once again they were all overcome by a sort of thickening feeling, which made it hard to move because of weakness or disinclination. As if the world were built of plywood and were now delaminating before their eyes, as if all contours were blurring, revealing fluid passages between things. The same process affected their ideas, and so the discussion became less and less factual, because the speakers had suddenly lost their sense of certainty, and every word that had been reliable so far now acquired contexts, entailed allusions, or flickered with remote associations. Finally they sank into dreadful fatigue, and one after another floated off to their rooms, breathing heavily on the stairs.”

Subtitled 'A Health Resort Horror Story', The Empusium is Antonia Lloyd-Jones' translation of Olga Tokarczuk's 2022 novel Empuzjon.

The book is an alternative take on Mann's Der Zauberberg, set in 1913 the Silesian health spa resort of Görbersdorf (now Sokołowsko) from which the clinic in Davos took its inspiration. At initial face value, this reads as a work of the same period as Mann's novel, and read simply as historical fiction, Tokarczuk's recreation of the town is impressive, rendered in vivid prose:

“By a twist of circumstance, as Frau Opitz’s body was descending on ropes into the open grave, the exact autumn equinox took place, and the ecliptic was aligned in such a special way that it counterbalanced the vibration of the Earth. Naturally, nobody noticed this–people have more important things on their minds. But we know it.

In the highland valley that spread above the underground lake stillness sets in, and although it is never windy here, now there is no sense of the faintest puff, as though the world were holding its breath. Late insects are perching on stems, a starling turns to stone, staring at a long-gone movement among the clumps of parsley in the garden. A spiderweb stretched between the blackberry bushes stops quivering and goes taut, straining to hear the waves coming from the cosmos, and water makes itself at home in the moss thallus, as if it were to stay there forever, as if it were to forget about its most integral feature–that it flows. For the earthworm, the world’s tension is a sign to seek shelter for the winter. Now it is planning to push down into the ground, perhaps hoping to find the deeply hidden ruins of paradise. The cows that chew the yellowing grass also come to a standstill, putting their internal factories of life on hold. A squirrel looks at the miracle of a nut and knows that it is pure, condensed time, that it is also its future, dressed in this strange form. And in this brief moment everything defines itself anew, marking out its limits and aims afresh; just for a short while, blurred shapes cluster together again.

It is a very brief moment of equilibrium between light and darkness, almost imperceptible, a single instant in which the whole pattern is filled, the promise of great order is fulfilled, but only in the blink of an eye. In this scrap of time everything returns to a state of perfection that existed before the sky was separated from the earth. But at once this perfect balance dissolves like a shape on water, the image dims and dusk starts to drift towards night, then night gains the upper hand–now it will be avenged for its six-month period of humiliation, establishing new bridgeheads every evening.”

But the political and philos debate, unlike Mann's, rather peter out as the patients are too fond of the local liquor, Schwärmerei: “Its strange flavour and smell made Wojnicz think of the word ‘underground’. It tasted of roots and moss, mushroom spawn and liquorice all at once. It must have contained aniseed and wormwood. The first impression on the tongue was not good–it seemed to smell bad, but only for a split second. Then warmth flooded the mouth, and the sensation of an incredible wealth of flavours–like forest berries and something entirely exotic.”

and also descend rapidly into one topic - “Wojnicz had noticed that every discussion, whether about democracy, the fifth dimension, the role of religion, socialism, Europe, or modern art, eventually led to women” - and to straight out misogyny:

“À propos, sometimes when we address a woman,’ continued the buttoned-up Walter Frommer, ‘we might gain the impression that she replies sensibly and thinks as we do. But that is an illusion. They imitate’–he placed special emphasis on the word imitate–‘our way of communicating, and one cannot deny that some of them are very good at it.’”

Cleverly, Tokarczuk has taken all the views expressed from a range of 36 canonical male writers and thinkers, including Augustine of Hippo, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Jack Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ovid and Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, Shakespeare, August Strindberg and Thomas Aquinas”.

The novel takes its title from Aristophanes play Βάτραχοι (The Frogs), which one character tells claims is the earliest known mention of witches in literature:

“XANTHIAS Aargh, I can see a gigantic monster!
DIONYSUS What’s it like?
XANTHIAS Terrifying. And it keeps changing: it’s a bull, no, it’s a mule, and now it’s a woman. And what a beauty!
DIONYSUS Where is she? Let me at her!
XANTHIAS The woman’s gone, she’s changed into a dog.
DIONYSUS So it’s Empusa!
XANTHIAS Her whole face is one great ball of fire!
DIONYSUS Does she have a leg of bronze?
XANTHIAS By Poseidon, the other one’s made of cow dung, I’m sure of it!
DIONYSUS Where can I run to?
XANTHIAS And where can I?”

And as the novel progresses the Horror Story element comes to the fore, with the mysterious Tutschi, figures in the form of a woman created out of the natural products of the forest which the local charcoal burners used for sexual relief, but which seem to, once a year, have a life of their own (leading to an oddly high number of graves in the local cemetary with men who die in November). And the Hans-Castorp-like central character, Mieczysław Wojnicz, in his early 20s, harbours a hidden secret of his own.

An impressive read - not as innovative as Flights (tr. Jennifer Croft), which remains my favourite of Tokarczuk's work, but one which combines the atmosphere of Primeval and Other Times and the mystery element of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (both tr. Lloyd-Jones) with a political message, and at a more sensible length than The Books of Jacob (tr. Croft).

In a textual conversation between one Nobel winner and another, Tokarczuk re-opens Mann's [book:The Magic Mountain|661418] but in her own inimitable way. This feels more like [book:Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|51648276] than [book:The Books of Jacob|41724950]: it's easy to read, is quite the page-turner, in fact, though - of course - there are depths here too. OT's humour is on full display as is her sardonic wit and intelligence and, make no mistake, there's a whole raft of quotations, allusions and intertexts that make up the narrative. With an author's note that stretches from Ovid to Shakespeare, Augustine to Milton, Darwin to Kerouac, this places itself firmly in dialogue with a whole stretch of what we might loosely call western thought, just as Mann offered up a compressed survey of European philosophy.

What is at stake here, though, is a question of gender and the extent to which misogyny is deeply (deeply) engrained within western intellectual traditions and culture. OT deals with this with a sense of biting sarcasm: ' "Woman represents a bygone, inferior stage of evolution, so writes Darwin... Woman is like..." - here he sought the right word - "an evolutionary laggard" '; and the 'puppen', kinds of organic sex dolls (though keep your eye on them...).

The book also revitalises the <i>bildungsroman</i> tradition partly by exploring the way Wojnicz's upbringing by his father inculcates a sense of conservative masculinity but also by offering up quite a different sense of growth: 'he felt plural, multiple, multifaceted, compound and complicated like a coral reef, like a mushroom spawn whose actual existence is located underground'.

I'm assuming the title is a compound term indicating a merger between 'empusa', the female witch-like spirits mentioned in Aristophanes' [book:The Frogs|242296], and Plato's (all male) [book:Symposium|81779] - a spot-on mash-up that brings together the philosophical and the comical in all these texts.

It's worth adding that you should keep an eye out for the switch to a 'we' first-person plural voice - I was reading an ARC which doesn't always allow a space before the transition, though it's easy enough to note it - I won't say anything about what this means in terms of plot but certainly perspective is one of the themes of the narrative.

So, my verdict is that this may well be a popular OT sitting alongside Drive Your Plow - it wears its learning and politics lightly (even, we might say, a little heavy handedly) but it's a nimble, knowing way of saying something serious in a witty and sardonic voice.

This was such a joy to read. For all those people who think Tokarczuk may be difficult and hard work: not at all! It's fun and accessible. The right mix of atmosphere, mystery and entertaining dialogue. I was completely transported to the wet and forested mountains of pre-war Central Europe.

Wojnicz, a young Pole, suffers from lung disease and the story begins when he arrives in the spa town of Görbersdorf, today in Southern Poland, back in 1913 then the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Because the official Kurhaus is full, he stays in a Pension for Gentlemen. The 'gentlemen' take themselves very seriously and during their daily meals and outages do little else than endlessly ponder and discuss such important manly matters as politics, history and - above all - the inferior nature of women. Their conversations are so misogynistic that it's hard to believe the novel is set just 100 years ago. And as Tokarczuk nicely points out in her author's note: all of their ridiculous statements are taken from distinguished real life thinkers and writers.

Hidden in the dark however, strange things are going on. The owner's wife suddenly dies. Death is everywhere. And everyone seems increasingly addicted to a herbal concoction that clouds the mind.

I did not read Thomas Mann before, but can imagine I would have enjoyed this even more if I had. But also without it was a clear 5 star reading experience for me.

I have been scanning NetGalley hoping to see an ARC of this since the English translation was announced, and now I’ve only gone and read it in 2 days when I’d actually wanted to savour it! Like the heady, savoury liquor the patients at this sanitarium imbibe.
I enjoyed Tokarczuk’s Drive the Plow over the Bones of the Dead, and I enjoyed Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. So I knew that I’d enjoy this! Having read The Magic Mountain definitely adds to the enjoyment of The Empusium, as it’s not just Easter eggs you’ll miss out on - it’s also the moments of sly humour and feminist riffing off Mann’s original.
Now planning to visit the site of the Guesthouse for Gentlemen in real life!