Excerpt from Melmoth by Sarah Perry, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'You must eat. You were already too thin; you are thinner now.'

'I don't want to eat.'

'All the same –' Helen gestures to a girl in a white shirt, orders beer for Karel, and for herself, only water from the tap.

'You think me ridiculous,' says Karel. He neatens his hair, serving only to demonstrate that he has aged five years in the short course of a week – lean face gone over to gauntness, stubble glinting white. 'Well, perhaps I am. Look at me! I do not sleep, as you see. I sit up at night, reading, and re-reading ...I didn't want to bother Thea, so I read under the covers. With a torch, you know. Like a boy.'

'And what have you been reading?' The beer is brought; the water, with its single cube of ice.

'What was I reading, she says! Not a wasted word. How like you. Already I feel better – how could I not? In your presence it all seems – fantastic, bizarre. You are so ordinary your very existence makes the extraordinary seem impossible. I mean it as a compliment.'

'I'm sure. Tell me, then' – Helen places her glass more precisely in the centre of its paper mat – 'Tell me at least what you've been reading – is it this, here, in this file?'

'Yes.' He shakes out a Petra cigarette, and lights it on the third attempt. 'Take it. Go on, then! Take it. Open it up.' The look he gives her then is one almost of malice: it puts her in mind of a child concealing spiders in a bag of sweets. She reaches for the file – it is very cold, having taken up more than its fair share of the night air; she unwinds the cord, which is bound tightly, and gives her trouble with its knots and turns; at last it gives unexpectedly – the file opens, and there spills out across the table a sheaf of yellowing paper. 'There,' says Karel. 'There!' He stabs it with a forefinger then retreats against the wall.

'May I look?'

'If you want – oh wait, wait' – the door is wrenched open, the velvet curtains billow – 'Is it her – has she come? Do you see her?'

Helen turns. Two boys come in – eighteen, no more, swollen with pride in earning a day's wages and spending it well. They stamp snow from their workman's boots, bawdily summon the waitress, and turn their attention to their phones. 'It is only men,' says Helen. 'Two men, quite ordinary.'

Karel laughs, shrugs, rises up once more in his seat. 'Don't mind me,' he says. 'Lack of sleep, you know – it's only – I thought I saw someone I knew.'

Helen surveys him a while. Anxiety and embarrassment move across his face, and she feels curiosity sharpen in her like a hunger.


But kindness wins out – he will speak, she thinks, when he can – and she turns to the manuscript. It is written in German, in a tilted copperplate as difficult to read as it must have been to master; there are crossings-out, and numbered footnotes: the effect is of a palimpsest pulled from museum archives, but the title page is dated 2016. Separately, fastened with a paperclip, one typed sheet of Czech is dated the preceding week, and is addressed to Karel.

'It's not intended for me,' says Helen, turning the page face down. Unease causes her to say more sharply than she intends: 'Ah, I wish you'd just tell me what's the matter – you're behaving like a child having nightmares. Wake up, won't you!'

'I wish I could! I wish I could! All right.' He draws breath, places both hands flat upon the document, and remains very still for a moment. Then he says – casually, easily, as if it has nothing at all to do with the matter at hand – 'Tell me: do you know the name Melmoth?'

Excerpted from Melmoth by Sarah Perry. Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Perry. Excerpted by permission of Custom House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.