Tower of Love

When Jean Maleux, a young sailor, is appointed assistant keeper of the Ar-Men lighthouse off the coast of Brittany, he is drawn into a dark world of physical peril, sexual obsession and necrophilia. The lighthouse is home to the eccentric, embittered keeper Mathurin Barnabas: an irascible and grizzled old man who appears to be more animal than human. Time passes in alternating stages of mind-numbing monotony and bouts of horror as our hero struggles against the endless assaults of wind and loneliness, with only his duties and his mute companion for distraction. The sea evolves into a wild force and the lighthouse itself into a monster that Jean must tame if he is to survive. First published in French in 1899 and never before translated, The Tower of Love will be of keen interest to readers of Decadent, Symbolist and Romantic horror fiction.