The King in the Golden Mask and Other Stories

First Edition, 1982. 186 pages. 

Selected, translated and introduced by Iain White. First published in French in 1892, The King in the Golden Mask gathers some of Marcel Schwob’s cruelest and most erudite tales. Melding the fantastic with historical fiction, these stories describe moments of unexplained violence both historical and imaginary, often blending the two through Schwob’s collaging of primary source documents into fiction. Brimming with murder, suicide, royal leprosy and medieval witchcraft, Schwob’s stories portray clergymen furtively attending medieval sabbaths, Protestant galley slaves laboring under the persecution of Louis XIV and dice-tumbling sons of Florentine noblemen wandering Europe at the height of the 1374 plague. These writings are of such hallucinatory detail and linguistic specificity that the reader is left wondering whether they aren’t newly unearthed historical documents. To read Schwob is to encounter human history in its most scintillating form as it comes into contact with this unparalleled imagination.

Pages of text block show slight yellowing (common with Carcanet books of this era). Front endpaper has one small tear to edge. Otherwise Near Fine. Dust jacket is clean and bright. A very nice copy of this scarce Schwob title.

Very Good+ in Near Fine dust jacket.