His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred

The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot

The story is charged, atmospheric, thought-provoking and bleakly skewed' - Daily Telegraph

A Perfume for a new generation. Vallgren conveys readers through [Hercule and Henriette's] wonderful love as well as their terrible hatred with equal relish and aplomb. Tremendous

Vallgren's Gothic parable, rich in folk-myth symbolism, highlights the interconnectivity of linguistics, psychology and religion while never compromising the blood-racing pace of a rollicking adventure story

A picaresque, grotesque and magical novel

CARL-JOHAN VALLGREN was born in 1964. He is the author of eight novels, of which The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot...was the first novel to be appear in English. His work has been translated into eleven languages. He lives in Stockholm.

On a stormy night in 1813, a doctor is called to the aid of two prostitutes in childbirth. To one is born a healthy girl, Henriette, to the other, what can only be described as a monster: a boy, Hercules, deaf-mute and hideously deformed, and with the power to read minds. 
 
As he tells the story of Hercules' bizarre and colourful life, which leads him from the bordello of his birth to a travelling freak show and then a Jesuit monastery and an asylum, Vallgren paints a magical picture of nineteenth-century Europe. This picaresque fable is filled with curiosities but is, at its heart, an extraordinary and unforgettable love story.

Carl-Johan Vallgren

Sarah Death

A gloriously inventive historical adventure

Sensational... Vallgren has a superb talent for pastiche, and makes witty and convincing cameos of the infamous and the great

Hugely entertaining, witty and thoughtful, this is a future cult classic

Frame[s] the everyday with an almost medieval fascination with the grotesque and the macabre... proof, in this case, that the devil has all the good stories

There are some nicely observed episodes here... disturbing metaphors that offer brilliant, brief illuminations of his brutal subject matter

St Petersburg, 1899. Obsessive gambler Rubashov has played every game in town. Now on New Year's Eve, he finds himself on the brink of ruin, and decides to make a bid for the ultimate rush, the biggest gamble ever, to challenge the Devil to a game of poker. 
 
Rubashov loses. His punishment is not to go straight to Hell (Hell is full and has been for years), instead he is condemned to immortality. And so begins a monumental trip through Europe, as Rubashov encounters some of the twentieth century's most notorious characters.

Carl-Johan Vallgren

Praise for Documents Concerning Rubashov the Gambler

A gloriously inventive historical adventure

Sensational... Vallgren has a superb talent for pastiche, and makes witty and convincing cameos of the infamous and the great

Hugely entertaining, witty and thoughtful, this is a future cult classic

A gloriously inventive historical adventure

Sensational... Vallgren has a superb talent for pastiche, and makes witty and convincing cameos of the infamous and the great

Hugely entertaining, witty and thoughtful, this is a future cult classic

A gloriously inventive historical adventure

Sensational... Vallgren has a superb talent for pastiche, and makes witty and convincing cameos of the infamous and the great

Hugely entertaining, witty and thoughtful, this is a future cult classic

Books by Carl-Johan Vallgren

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