For more than three decades, Lucien - one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel - has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. This, the first English translation of Wittkop's notorious novel, introduces English readers to a masterpiece of French literature. Like the best writings of Edgar Allen Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop's prose goes far beyond gothic horror to explore the melancholy of the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.