Books to Die For

Gabrielle Wittkop's THE NECROPHILIAC

Confession: I've often wished that I had an aptitude for languages (apart from English). As a lifelong book nerd I'm well aware of how many horror stories I may never get to devour/experience because they'll never be translated. It's like a Pandora's box that I just don't hold the key to.

But every so often a translation comes along that allows us a window into the genre fiction that's being created and enjoyed in other parts of the world. This week's Book to Die For, Gabrielle Wittkop's THE NECROPHILIAC, comes to us from France in an edition translated by Don Bapst (for ECW Press). I first covered this book in Rue Morgue #112 around the time of its 2011 release. I wrote:

LE NECROPHILE (a.k.a THE NECROPHILIAC) is a French-language novella penned in 1972 by Gabrielle Wittkop (1920-2002), a writer who was born in France by spent much of her adult life in Germany. By most accounts, Wittkop was an unapologetic eccentric with an anti-social streak who chose to live life on her own terms. She also had a long-held fascination with death, sexual deviation and the macabre that found its way into much of her fiction, though perhaps never more so than in THE NECROPHILIAC. As the title implies, this is a book about loving the dead - literally. But I'm pretty much willing to guarantee that it is also the most poetic book you will ever read about graphic necrophilia. And it's endlessly fascinating for that very reason, as well as for its ruminations on mortality and the complex, isolating nature of our protagonist's sexual inclinations.

The 92-page volume takes the form of an illicit diary, covering just over two years in the life of Lucien, a passionate bisexual necrophiliac. The entries are singularly concerned with his acquisition of corpses (primarily by grave-robbing, though on occasion more devious means are employed), the act of pleasuring oneself with the dead, the specifics of human decay and the ways of temporarily arresting it. Crass content, sure, but approached using the lyrical language of elegant erotic fiction, making it simultaneously beautiful and grotesque - almost like a highly romanticized counterpart to Japan's Ero guro (erotic grotesque) movement. Lucien has great emotions for his deceased companions, viewing them as compliant lovers, even as he commits undeniably uncomfortable (horrifying? icky?) acts upon them, such as when he gratifies himself with a still-born infant.

Even now, more than 40 years after its initial publication, it feels a bit taboo to read it. Here, at last, us a boundary that few dare to cross, an element of the macabre that has not been played out in a thousand similar iterations already, and it's been kept secret from us English-speakers by the barrier of language for decades.

If you dare to dive into THE NECROPHILIAC and its strange perversions, it is available on Amazon.com for under $15 in both a paperback and eBook edition.