shelidonMarch 30, 2024Leave a Comment

Easter/time rejection! While I have two agents looking at the full manuscript, yet another one answered “thanks but no thanks”, so my Patrons get their festive story featuring spring, bunnies and butterflies.

Well, no, not really.

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) was a prominent Russian intellectual who worked as poet, novelist, playwright, and diplomat. He ventured into historical fiction with works like Prince Silver, a novel set in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, which explored a period of political turmoil in 16th-century Russia. His main contribution, as far as we’re concerned, rests however in his exploration of Gothic themes with two novellas: The Family of the Ghoul, translated in this short volume, and The Vampire, published in Saint Petersburg in 1841 under the pseudonym of Krasnorogsky.

The Family of the Ghoul was originally written in French, in 1839, during a trip to France from Frankfurt where Tolstoy was working in the Russian Embassy. It was translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich and published in January 1884, while the original French text was printed in 1950. My translation of course comes from the French version.

The word vourdalak appears first in the words of Alexander Pushkin’s poem Wurdulac, part of the Songs of the Western Slavs cycle from the early 19th century, and it’s the distortion of words used in the slavic areas to indicate blood-sucking creatures. It’s sometimes left untranslated. Since it’s a creature who returns from the grave, I’ve decided not to use “vampire”, as many do, and I preferred the term “ghoul”.

I think the novella is simply astonishing.
Enjoy!