Empuzjon

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a young hydraulic engineering student from Lwów, arrives at Görbersdorf (today Sokołowsko), a health resort in Lower Silesia known for treating tuberculosis.

He takes a room at a guesthouse for gentlemen run by Wilhelm Opitz and is soon drawn into the evening gatherings of the other lodgers, who drink a local, mildly intoxicating brew and argue about religion, politics and the nature of women.

The talk turns more misogynist as the weeks pass, and the story slips between Wojnicz's own view and an unsettling collective "we" that watches from the surrounding woods.

Tokarczuk's first novel after her Nobel Prize, published in Polish in 2022, is a conscious answer to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The author calls it a "horror story of the patriarchate" and the Polish subtitle describes it as a naturopathic horror story. It mixes historical fiction, philosophical debate and folk and gothic horror in a slow, atmospheric build. The English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, titled The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, appeared in 2024 from Riverhead (US) and Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK).