Melmoth: A Novel

"Set in Prague, Melmoth is a lush, almost camp Gothic novel about a monster who witnesses people’s worst moments, then uses them as leverage to tempt them into a Faustian bargain. It is occasionally overwrought, but it is a real pleasure to read something so full of conviction. The past few years have brought a glut of fashionably affectless and amoral fiction, to which Sarah Perry’s fierce, full-hearted books about love and ethics feel like the perfect antidote."