Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot

Book excerpt: Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot is the picaresque fable of the love that grows between the mute, telepathic human monstrosity Hercules and the beautiful Henriette—a love that will entwine their fates forever. Author Carl-Johan Vallgren creates an unforgettable cast of grotesqueries in a magical and atmospheric tour of nineteenth-century Europe—from the bordello, where Hercules is born, to the squalor of the asylum, where he finds only pain, to the sinister grandeur of the Jesuit monasteries in which he finds both shelter and peril, to the phantasmagoria of the freak show with which he travels. A moving, uplifting, at times dark and macabre tale of social oppression, official corruption, religious persecution, and unwavering devotion, it is a story that enchants and surprises . . . and leaves one wide-eyed with wonder, like a small child at his first carnival.