London, late nineteenth century. The fog never quite lifts, and neither does the unease.

Zenon is a Polish émigré novelist – successful, rational, settled in his skepticism. When his circle of London acquaintances falls under the spell of Spiritualism, he watches their séances with detached amusement. He is not the kind of man to be taken in by suggestion and theater. Then he meets Daisy.

Daisy is not easily explained. Magnetic, dangerous, seemingly capable of bending the laws of physics to her will, she draws Zenon toward her with a force he cannot account for and cannot resist. His fiancée Betsy – loyal, clear-eyed, steadfast – is determined not to lose him to whatever Daisy represents. And then Ada arrives from Poland, an old flame carrying a secret that changes the shape of everything Zenon thought he knew.

Originally published in 1911 and translated into English for the first time, The Vampire is a richly layered novel. On its surface, it is a gothic thriller set in the milieu of real historical figures – Madame Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley – at a moment when séances filled London drawing rooms and European intellectuals were discovering Far Eastern mysticism with evangelical fervor. Beneath that surface, it is a love story, a meditation on expatriate longing, and a study in what happens when a rational mind meets something it cannot categorize.

Reymont, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924 and best known for his monumental The Peasants, rarely receives credit for this earlier, stranger work. The Vampire reveals a writer more playful and more unsettling than his reputation suggests – one willing to work at the edges of realism, in the company of shadows.

Published with the support of the ©POLAND Translation Program.

Władysław Reymont

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