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Patriarchal horror

A bizarre curio from the Nobel laureate
by
March 2025, no. 473

The Empusium: A health report horror story by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Text Publishing, $34.99 pb, 320 pp

Buy this book

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Patriarchal horror

A bizarre curio from the Nobel laureate
by
March 2025, no. 473

The title of The Empusium, the newly translated work by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is an invention. It is a portmanteau that fuses masculine and feminine literary allusions: first, Plato’s Symposium, which tells of a drunken Athenian banquet in which great statesmen give speeches on the nature of love; second, the empusa, a shape-shifting female demon who, according to Greek mythology, had the sirenic ability to lure and prey upon young men.

The Empusium: A health report horror story

The Empusium: A health report horror story

by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Text Publishing, $34.99 pb, 320 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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