Maleficium

"Magnificent blasphemy; a whiff of scandal."?Pascale Millot, Montr‚al centre-ville

"The world that Martine Desjardins presents with such admirable skill in Maleficium is inhabited by fear and desire, and its reality has unsuspected depths. With its surprises, exotic voyages, and shimmering descriptions, this book is a pure pleasure to read."?Canada Council for the Arts

In Maleficium, Martine Desjardins delivers to readers the unexpurgated revelations of Vicar Jerome Savoie, a heretic Catholic priest who has violated the sanctity of the confessional. In Savoie's confession-within-a-confession, seven penitents, each afflicted with a debilitating malady or struck with a crippling deformity, relates his encounter with an enigmatic young woman whose lips bear a striking scar.

As they penetrate deep into Ethiopia in search of wingless locusts, hunt for fly-whisks among the clove plantations of Zanzibar, bargain for saffron in a Srinagar bazaar, search for the rarest frankincense, pursue the coveted hawksbill turtle in the Sea of Oman, seek the formula for sabon Nablus in Palestine, or haggle over Persian carpets in the royal gardens of Shiraz, each of the men falls victim to his own secret vice. The men's individual forms of punishment are revealed through the agency of the young woman, and are wrought upon their bodies.

Martine Desjardins is a freelance writer, translator, and journalist for L'actualit‚ magazine.

Fred A. Reed is an author, award-winning translator, and international journalist specializing in Middle Eastern affairs.

Author and translator David Homel also works as a journalist, editor, and screenwriter.