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Presented here for the first time in English, in translations by Brian
Stableford, the current volume contains two novels of the occult by Gilbert-Augustin
Thierry (1843-1915), which were originally published in serial form
in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The first, Stigma (1888),
the author's masterpiece, is a horror story on two levels, not merely
in terms of the relentless suffering inflicted on the characters, but
also in the subtler sense in which it gradually undermines the identification
that the reader initially assumes, automatically, with the narrator-a
sympathy that is gradually and clinically drained away to the extent that
he too, like every other character in the story, is stigmatized as a victim
of universal human corruption, an existential condition in which the "help"
rendered by a quasi-Jansenist God is as horrifically ironic as that rendered
by his deluded minions. A similar track is followed in the second novel,
The Pompeiian Fresco to a scathing coda-which, juxtaposed and coupled
with the melodramatic climax-raises the question of how, in the hands
of an honest writer, stories can and ought to end, once Amour and Faith
have both been discounted as realistic possibilities of happiness.
Cover by W.T. Horton
Published by Snuggly Books in August 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64525-105-7
