The Horla (The Art of the Novella)

About this book

Our woe is upon us. This chilling tale of one mans descent into madness was published shortly before the author was institutionalized for insanity and so The Horla has inevitably been seen as informed by Guy de Maupassants mental illness. While such speculation is murky it is clear that de Maupassanthailed alongside Chekhov as father of the short storywas at the peak of his powers in this innovative precursor of first-person psychological fiction. Indeed he worked for years on The Horlas themes and form first drafting it as Letter from a Madman then telling it from a doctors point of view before finally releasing the terrified protagonist to speak for himself in its devastating final version. In a brilliant new translation all three versions appear here as a single volume for the first time. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel too long to be a short story the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless it is a form beloved and practiced by literatures greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are in many instances presented in book form for the first time.