The Dwarf of Westerbourg - Christian Heinrich Spiess

The Dwarf of Westerbourg by Christian Heinrich Spiess, intro by Daniel Corrick / ISBN 9781645250494 / 293-page paperback from Snuggly Books (2020)  *** The Dwarf of Westerbourg, out of print for almost two hundred years in English, and with only three copies of the original print run known to exist, is the acknowledged masterpiece of Christian Heinrich Spiess, and one of the most outrageous Gothic novels ever produced in that genre’s heyday. Set in the thirteenth century, this bizarre story of Rodolphe of Westerbourg, a knight, and the dwarf-phantom Peter, is replete with black magic, gruesome killings and horrid happenings—is, in fact, a whirlwind of strange adventure piled on strange adventure, a downward spiraling, the depths of which few works of literature have managed to achieve. Upon its original publication in Germany in 1791, the book, with its questionable morality and unmentionable events, shocked readers and quickly became a bestseller of its time. The Dwarf of Westerbourg,