The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules BarefootHis Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred

Carl-Johan Vallgren

Spanning almost two centuries, The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, his Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred is a thrilling, disturbing and beautiful story, that has sold to over 20 countries.

Hercule Barefoot is born in a brothel in Königsberg in 1813. It is not his love that is monstrous – but he himself. He arouses people’s horror with his disfigurement. He also has dwarfism and is deaf-mute, it is a miracle that he survives.

But he has been given a gift, or rather two. One is the ability to read other people’s thoughts. This will bring him a violent and strange fate, and dangerous enemies. The other is his unyielding love. A girl is born in the brothel on the same night as him, Henriette Vogel, and his connection with her becomes the guiding light of his entire life. We follow him through stays at monasteries and madhouses, visits to the Vatican and variety shows, Swedenborgians and salons. Hercule’s live also follows the emergence of the deaf community’s own language. Hercule Barefoot lives for almost a hundred years. But in a prologue and epilogue dated in the 1990s, we also get to know his descendants, who live on the island of St. Martha’s Vineyard in America. In the 19th century, a colony of deaf people was established there, and Hercule Barfuss emigrated there when his life took a new turn. But throughout the story we never lose sight of Hercule Barfuss and his gripping passion: first and foremost, this is a remarkable love story.

The novel is intensely dramatic, with frightening and unpredictable twists and turns, it also takes pauses to revel in moods, details and atmospheric descriptions. Carl-Johan Vallgren’s masterful storytelling and his penchant for both wild fantasy and historical knowledge and accuracy are unmistakable. As its subtitle hints, Vallgren’s novel summons a world of light and dark, beauty and deformation. Upon release it was met with critical acclaim, recieved the prestidgious August Prize.

‘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’ ― Time Out

‘The story has an obsessive drive’ ― Christopher Priest, Guardian

‘Challenging and shocking’ ― Guardian

‘The new cult read’ ― Vogue

‘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’ ― Metro

‘A picaresque, grotesque and magical novel’ ― Guardian