The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred

A novel with a title this long and extravagant promises the reader an enticing smorgasbord of literary excess; you can almost hear the author licking his lips with satisfaction each time you turn a page.

Our hero, born in 1813 to a Königsberg prostitute, is 'nothing but the quintessence of human deformity': from his grotesquely overgrown head sprout snail-like protruberances; instead of a nose he has a huge cavity in the middle of his face; inside this gaping hole lurks a tongue split like a snake's; he has no arms, no ears (and therefore can neither hear nor speak), and his back is covered in fur.

Against all the odds Hercule Barfuss not only lives, but is blessed/cursed with an incredible gift in compensation for his hideous physical appearance: he can read minds and suggest thoughts. From his earliest years, this gets him into terrible trouble and is responsible for separating him from his true love, the beautiful Henriette, born to another prostitute on the very same wintery night he came into the world.

Buffeted by the deeds of evil men wherever he goes, Hercule surreptitiously uses his gift to survive. However, when his tormentors destroy forever the thing that has made him happiest, he unleashes on them one by one the full force of his powers to exact on them a terrible and ruthless revenge.

Vallgren's insane adventure lurches across nineteenth-century Europe, taking in the bawdiness and corruption of the aristocracy, the phantasmagoria of the travelling circuses and the ruthless power of the Church.

The story of Hercule's sufferings is like a conflation of other books and films: the fanaticism of the Jesuits mirrors that of their brothers in The Mission and of the monks in The Name of the Rose; the damaged central character suffers as did Grenouille in Perfume; and anger-fuelled revenge lies at the heart of a thousand westerns (and The Return of the Jedi!).

If Vallgren's themes are well-worn, and his writing reminiscent of Angela Carter's and Patrick Süskind's, none can doubt the gusto with which he has told his story. And, after all, what greater subject is there for a novelist than flaming love and burning hatred?