Eat Him If You Like - Softcover

‘Sticking closely to the known facts, Jean Teulé’s novelisation offers no easy explanations for what happened but the transformation from rural idyll to hell on earth is terrifyingly convincing.’ Financial Times

A true story.

Tuesday 16 August 1870, Alain de Monéys, makes his way to the village fair. He plans to buy a heifer for a needy neighbour and find a roofer to repair the roof of the barn of a poor acquaintance.

He arrives at two o’clock. Two hours later, the crowd has gone crazy; they have lynched, tortured, burned and eaten him. How could such a horror be possible?

With frightening precision, Jean Teulé reconstructs each step of one of the most shameful stories in the history of nineteenth-century France.

Based on a shamefully brutal incident from French history, Jean Teulé’s riveting story shows how easily a group of individuals can turn into an irrational, bloodthirsty mob.

Reviews

‘Teulé’s milieu is centred on the “merriment of vice and cruelty”. His novels are bawdy, full of rollicking sex and roiling violence. However, he undercuts this with a graphic humour born of his earlier career as an illustrator.’ The Independent

‘Exceptionally well written, Eat Him If You Like will have a very special appeal to suspenseful mystery enthusiasts, students of 19th Century French history...’ Midwest Book Review

‘An engrossing book to be read in one big gulp’ Kirkus Reviews

‘Teulé’s vivid account of ordinary folk inexplicably transformed into monsters resonates long after reading’ Publishers Weekly

‘Makes you feel uncomfortable for all the right reasons ... a thought provoking novella’ Savidge Reads