The Ravaged Night

A hypnotic haunted-house novel in the tradition of Stephen King and the cult slasher movie by one of France's most ambitious and exacting writers. In a quiet suburb in the mid-1990s, nothing ever seems to happen. Then a teenage boy dies, and the adults are quick to call it suicide. His friends aren’t so sure. Drawn together by grief, boredom and a creeping sense that something is terribly wrong, a group of teens begins to fixate on an abandoned house at the end of a cul-de-sac – a place everyone avoids, although no one can explain why. Once the gang crosses its threshold, they find that, somehow, the house seems to know them – showing them what they long for most, feeding on their fears, their shame, their secret rage. As the line between nightmare and waking life erodes, the group is forced to confront not only the house’s sinister power, but the violence, cruelty and despair festering inside their families and their town. An exhilarating celebration of Stephen King and late twentieth-century horror films, The Ravaged Night is an exceptional coming-of-age novel by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, one of France’s most ambitious and exacting writers.