Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk writes crime novels tucked neatly into the most wondrous array of interesting humans and wild thoughts imaginable. With her precise and specific language (thanks also to her translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones), THE EMPUSIUM takes a leap from Thomas Mann’s classic, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, and delves into the secret world of the turn-of-the-20th-century spa, a place where both mental and physical distress was to be challenged and transformed. Subtitling her latest book “A Health Resort Horror Story,” Tokarczuk doesn’t disappoint as a variety of surprises and strange turns take readers on a unique tour of a bygone world and those who suffered in and transcended its horrors.

"Couching the story in a mystery that provides a lot of conundrum without becoming uncomfortably complex, Tokarczuk fashions an easily readable tale that will have readers on their toes throughout."

In September 1913, just before the war to end all wars, a young Polish man comes to Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouses for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf to enjoy the fresh air of the Silesian Mountains and overcome his physical deficiencies, namely tuberculosis. A local liqueur is part of the daily regimen, a semi-psychedelic that helps men exercise their minds in productive debate about the issues of the day. One of those topics includes women and if they are truly second-class citizens by birth --- until Opitz’s wife kills herself on our protagonist’s first night there.

Something is very wrong in Görbersdorf. But who or what has been trying to upend the clean living and ordered existence at the spa? And who will be next? Is it our stalwart but sick young arrival from Lwów? As he ponders both his mental and physical health with deep consideration, he finds that there might be sinister forces that have reared their heads and have begun to infiltrate every last aspect of safety and security at the spa.

Tokarczuk knows how to spin a slow but lethal tale, allowing readers to bask in the smallest details about the protagonist, the environment and the world at large. Clearly, sitting on the cusp of the First World War, Germany and its surrounding areas are feeling that there is something afoot, and the air holds some heavy realities for everyone. As much as the spa is about the improvement of life, the forces outside it are not the boon to the health of our young Polish friend as might be expected.

Tokarczuk builds a substantial foundation of debate beneath her “horror story.” Similar to Mann’s opus once upon a time, it looks at how the human psyche and the physical body are inherently connected together with the spiritual world around them. Maybe you can’t see it, but it’s there, as the men at the spa realize. Kicked off by their first night’s unfortunate tragedy, each person there is in for a mind-rattling transformation that none of them could have expected.

There are few authors who can turn tragicomedy on its head and make readers both laugh and feel deeply the conflicting emotions that the men here must face. As much as they look within themselves to find healing for their various maladies, they also address their physical limitations with an intellectual bent. With the same determination as Mann before her, Tokarczuk doesn’t shy away from the hard facts of the pre-war arena and all the complications that are happening around them. Yet she builds it into the story with such an insightful light.

Every book this author writes is a decisive dive into human behavior, life and death, women and men, war and peace. Couching the story in a mystery that provides a lot of conundrum without becoming uncomfortably complex, Tokarczuk fashions an easily readable tale that will have readers on their toes throughout. Somewhere amidst the laughter is a message about just how fast life can change, a sentiment that the world is grappling with yet again. A real stunner of a book, THE EMPUSIUM is a call to spiritual arms and a happy ghostly tale just in time for Halloween.