The Merciful Women [Paperback]

A terrifying letter delivered by an unseen hand to John William Polidori unleashes a seminal tale of lust, literature and murder in Federico Andahazi's new novel, The Merciful Women. Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (later Shelley) and her step-sister Claire Clairmont make up the decadently inspired group assembled at the Villa Diodati in the shadow of the Alps during that famous summer of 1816 which, in Andahazi's view, "changed the course of world literature".

Byron's secretary the doctor and aspirant poet Polidori, nicknamed Pollydolly, "who bears with stoic resignation the cruellest indignities" from his contemptuous employer, accompanies the illustrious crew. Taunted and ignored by turns, this bitter and increasingly twisted sidekick to the Romantics is monstrously seduced into an opportunity for greatness and revenge by a horrendous Muse--Annette Legrand--who offers literary inspiration and genius in exchange for prosaic semen to save the lives of her insatiable sisters--the notorious Legrand twins.

In real life Polidori was indeed Byron's secretary. Described by his famous employer as "more apt to induce illnesses than to cure them" the sidelined sawbones and aspiring writer was a marginalised participant in that famous writing competition that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A few years later in 1819 Polidori gave a manuscript entitled "The Vampyre", apparently fathered on that same fateful night, to Byron's publishers. Whilst Byron indignantly denied authorship, this now classic gothic tale became an overnight runaway bestseller. The mystery of literary paternity, bastardy and possible plagiarism surrounding "The Vampyre" is the inspiration for Andahazi's fictional tale: "It is a truism to say that there is nothing as open to doubt as paternity, and yet this truth can be extended quite naturally to all literary off-spring."

This erotic roman à clef is a successful follow on to Andahazi's contentious first novel, The Anatomist, and continues his voluptuous fascination with bodily matters in a modern tale which would itself have been a worthy contender for that infamous romantic night of storytelling and ghostly invention. A witty, wicked drama about the monstrous birth of the gothic form, The Merciful Women reads at the pace of an alpine avalanche--and the twisted denouement is a cleverly uncanny ejaculation. --Rachel Holmes --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

This work brings a twist to the traditional vampire story, with opium and erotica providing the background for a literary novel of grand themes - sex, and literature.

The dazzling new novel by the author of The Anatomist.

Lake Geneva, 1816. Polidori, a guest of Byron and the Shelleys, is determined to trump their ghost stories and produce the most frightening vampire story ever written, on the very night Mary Shelley will first read her Frankenstein. The sinister Legrand sisters can help him. But, in exchange, what must Polidori offer these ghostly female predators?

Federico Andahazi
Federico Andahazi, in his mid-thirties, is an Argentine psychotherapist of Hungarian descent who lives in Buenos Aires. His first novel, The Anatomist, became a bestseller after it was awarded the Fortabat Prize in Argentina under controversial circumstances. His second novel is The Merciful Women.

Alberto Manguel is a well-known translator and critic. He is the author of The History of Reading.

Chapter 1 the clouds were black cathedrals, tall and Gothic, about to topple at any moment onto the city of Geneva. Further away, on the far slopes of the Savoyard Alps, the storm was angrily whipping up the wind, unsettling the calm of Lake Leman. Trapped between the sky and the mountains, like a hunted animal, the lake fought back, kicking like a horse, clawing like a tiger and lashing out with its tail like a dragon. In a hidden opening between the rocks that sunk into the waters lay a small beach: barely a strip of sand in the shape of a crescent moon, waning with the rising tide and waxing with the ebb. On that stormy July afternoon of 1816, a small boat docked at the western tip of the beach, at the head of the pier stranded like a ghostly skeleton overflown by gulls. The first to disembark was a lame man, trying to keep his balance so as not to fall into the lashing waters whose fury shook the pier's weak structure. Once his feet touched the ground, the traveller grabbed on to one of the piles and held out a hand to help his companions disembark: first two women and then another man. The group started to walk along the pier towards dry land like a troop of clumsy but cheerful tightrope walkers, without waiting for the third man who had been left to manage, not without difficulty, on his own. They walked in single file against the wind and up the slope until they arrived, sodden, merry and out of breath, at the Villa Diodati, the house on the top of a small cliff. The third man trotted along with short, quick steps, glum and not lifting his eyes, like a dog following his master's tracks. The women were Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her stepsister, Jane Clairmont. The former, in spite of being still unmarried, claimed the right to call herself Shelley, the surname of the man who was to be her husband; the latter, for reasons less well known, had renounced her given name and called herself Claire. The men were Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. But none of these characters matters much in our story, except the man who disembarked last, and who was walking all on his own, far behind: John William Polidori, Lord Byron's obscure and despised secretary.

The events of that summer in the Villa Diodati are sufficiently well documented. Or at least some of them are. A stack of recently discovered letters may bring to light certain other events which have remained unknown until this day, concerning the life of Dr Polidori, the shadowy author of The Vampyre. And even more importantly, they may offer reasons for his tragic and early death. As everyone knows, The Vampyre is the first vampire story, the cornerstone of the countless succession of stories that have made vampire lore a true literary genre which peaked (at least as far as celebrity is concerned) with Bram Stoker's all-too-famous Count Dracula. But no vampire story exists that does not owe a debt of gratitude to the satanic Dr Ruthwen fathered by John Polidori. However, the events that surround the birth of The Vampyre appear to be as mysterious as the tale itself. It is a truism to say that there is nothing as open to doubt as paternity, and yet this truth can be extended quite naturally to all literary offspring. Even though repeated cases of plagiarism (accusations old and new, whether proven or imaginary) seem to be part of the history of literature since its very beginnings, the controversy over The Vampyre did not stem from copyright claims. On the contrary, for some strange reason, no-one wished to claim as his or her own creation the evil creature that was to break new literary ground. The novella was published in 1819 under the name of Lord Byron, but here a paradox must be noted: while Byron accepted responsibility for the doubtful 'pregnancy' (so to speak) of Claire Clairmont, he furiously and vehemently rejected all responsibility for The Vampyre, placing the blame entirely on the shoulders of his secretary, John William Polidori. That is how the story was told.

And yet a tale as dark as The Vampyre could not, of course, have had a birth less murky than its contents. We know that, after Polidori's death, a considerable number of letters, legal documents and other writings were found in the doctor's possession, which were to contribute various undesirable facts to the biographies of several illustrious persons who had every right in the world to wish upon themselves an undisturbed posterity.

The correspondence in question is not new. Or rather, the absurd and scandalous controversies - juridical, scholarly and even political - to which these documents were subjected are well known to all. The arguments concerning their authenticity turned into something like a war. Expert opinions were published, as well as the results of calligraphy tests, ambiguous depositions of witnesses, and the indignant denials of those parties more or less implicated in the affair. But what was never, ever, made public was the contents of a single one of the letters, because - it was said - these perished in a fire that destroyed the archives of the court in 1824. All this was to be expected. But scandals, though giving the impression of being ubiquitous and everlasting, are often as fleeting as the time that separates one incident from the next, and they invariably end up buried under tons of paper and drowned in rivers of ink. The adamantine silence of all those involved, the progressive lack of interest of the public and, finally, the death of the main players relinquished into oblivion the controversial papers of which, it was said, nothing remained but ashes. The only document to survive was the no less dubious diary of John William Polidori.