Post by Calenture on Apr 28, 2007 7:07:00 GMT -5
Cover by Oliver Frey
First published 1920; English translation 1981 by Souvenir Press
Translated by Iain White
Among lovers of fantasy, Maurice Renard's The Hands of Orlac has aquired the mystique of a legend. The title is familiar to all, but throughout the sixty years since its publication in French, it has never been translated into English. The sense of loss has been heightened by the fact that during this time no less than four films have been made, based on the book---including the first, 1924 version by Robert Wiene that starred Conrad Veidt, the 1935 Hollywood film Mad Love with Peter Lorre and the 1961 Franco-British production starring Mel Ferrer.
Now, at last, Renard's famous novel, originally published in 1920, is available to English readers in a brilliantly faithful translation by Iain White.
The terrifyingly ingenious story centres round a world-famous concert pianist, Stephen Orlac, whose hands are horribly mutilated in a train accident. An eminent surgeon grafts on a new pair of hands, but with ghastly results, for Orlac now finds himself possessed, not of musical skills, but by strange and terrible impulses. The hands that he has been given were those of a man guillotined for murder, and the spirit of the dead man has survived in his hands to live again in the unfortunate pianist.
The Hands of Orlac is a grand guignol novel worthy of an author who steeped himself in the works of Edgar Allan Poe from his early youth. Rich in macabre fantasy, it is guaranteed to captivate the many readers who have waited so long for its appearance, as well as attracting a host of new fans. Rarely have suspense, horror and eroticism been so forcefully blended in one gripping tale.
Maurice Renard was born in 1875, the son of a prosperous family with deep roots in the French legal heirarchy. Under pressure from his father, the young Renard also read for the Bar, but his heart was not in his profession and before long he had become a full-time writer of novels that blended science fiction, horror and suspense in full-blooded measure. From 1905 until his premature death in 1939 following an operation, he produced a succession of novels that brought him the accolade of the Parisian literati and their hangers-on. A close friend of many French literary giants, he was a frequent visitor to the theatre and a connoisseur of contemporary painting.
Had Renard been able to write in English, he would undoubtedly have made his name in Hollywood. As it was, his books were made the basis of several films which are today regarded as classics.
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