The Damned (Wiseblood Classics)

THE DAMNED (Là-bas) follows Durtal, a sensitive, spiritually-attuned man who is writing a biography of the fifteenth-century child-murderer Gilles de Rais (the supposed model for "Bluebeard"). Durtal scorns the bored embrace of commonplace reality so characteristic of his age, and, rejecting this banality, he searches for spiritual intensity by immersing himself in another age. The grotesque Madame Chantelouve leads him into the underground world of Satanism in fin-de-siècle Paris, and it is there, in utter darkness, that he begins to see the light. Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction and non-fiction, poetry and philosophy that find redemption in uncanny places and people; wrestle us from the tyranny of boredom; mock the pretensions of respectability; engage the hidden mysteries of the human heart, be they sources of either violence or courage; articulate faith and doubt in their incarnate complexity; dare an unflinching gaze at human beings as "political animals"; and suffer through this world's trials without forfeiting hope. Visit us at www.wisebloodbooks.com We are wide-eyed for new epiphanies of beauty.