The Merciful Women

Second-Hand

Excellent condition

In the summer of 1816, Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary’s sister, and Lord Byron hid themselves inside a Swiss villa, whiling away rainy afternoons with a Gothic novel writing contest.

In Andahazi’s reimagining, there was a fifth competitor, John Polidori, Byron’s manservant, a talentless would-be writer resentful of the ease of his master’s life. Through a Faustian pact with an unseen intercessant, Polidori obtains the most compelling vampire story ever written, which he will read aloud the night Mary Shelley first unveils Frankenstein.

But The Vampyre has striking similarities to Polidori’s benefactor and to what she asks of him in return.

Opium, erotica, and decadence meld into a sly and stylish novel about literary ambition, talent, and inspiration.