The Vampire of Ropraz Book

That was really strange reading. The vampire of Ropraz is an atmospheric somewhat gothic tale illustrating old saying that when reason sleeps demons arise. Young girl died and was buried but the next day her violated and mutilated body was found on the local cemetery, and then next body and one more corpse. Local community was gripped by an uncontrollable fear. Someone indicated on own neighbor as a perpetrator of theses repulsive practices, someone heard something while another saw something. Finally someone cried vampire and so peculiar witchhunt began.

Writing here is beautiful, poetic even, with perfect evocation of time, place and people. Small, seemingly ordinary village turns out to be a hotbed of superstitions and poverty, avarice and obtuseness, incest and other degenerations, land of wolves and neglect. Villagers, you can almost feel their presence, lead their gloomy life, marked with suspicion and morbid fascination with horror, tormented by lust and dread.

Endlessly construing the threat from deep within and from without, from the forest, from the cracking of the roof, from the wailing of the wind, from the beyond, from above, from beneath, from below: the threat from elsewhere . You bar yourself inside you skull, your sleep, your heart, your senses; you bolt yourself inside your farmhouse, gun at the ready, with a haunted, hungry soul.

Prose is spare and economical, reminds more reportage than novel, and very naturalistic. Yes, some scenes leave you with sense of disgust and disbelief that described here horrendous events could take place, not in some distant era, but at the beginning of the last century exactly. If not the ambigous ending novel and its message could be a perfect example of how ignorance, prejudice and stupidity eternally prevail. And so you can read it as the irony of fate, muffled laugh of History.

3.5/5