E. T. A. Hoffmann 4 hr read

Raised at a lonely monastery, the monk Medardus drinks a forbidden ancient elixir said to be the Devil's own, and is loosed upon the world, pursued by madness, crime, and a doppelgänger of himself.

E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1815 novel (volume one) is a landmark Gothic fantasy of the divided self. Feverish, uncanny, hugely influential. Read it for a foundational tale of the doppelgänger and the double life, a monk's descent into sin and horror after tasting the devil's elixir, from a master of the Romantic fantastic.

In its time

Published in 1815, during the 1810s, frankenstein's decade.

Reading it

4 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).