The Red Sorcerer

Delphi Fabrice

Translated by Brian Stableford

The Red Sorcerer, originally published as a 64-part feuilleton serial in Le Journal  between 31 July 1910 and 3 October 1910, and here appearing in English for the first time in an expert translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the more extreme entries in author Delphi Fabrice’ s already highly unusual canon.

Perhaps the most spectacularly peculiar manifestation of Fabrice’ s fervent desire to test and extend the limits of the permissible and the conventional in his fiction, The Red Sorcerer is a showpiece of crime and vice in which he removes the gloves of discretion completely, setting out to depict the world of prostitutes and their pimps with a frank and extreme brutality—so frank and so extreme, in fact, that it required a strange supernaturalization completely at odds with his supposed Naturalism.

Though the novel is certainly very unsavory, it is also quite extraordinary and thus worthy of attention as a specimen of the Decadent world view, and of a grim and relentless authorial sadism that tempts the suspicion that a complex psychology must lie behind it.

About the Author
“Delphi Fabrice” (the pseudonym of Gaston-Henri-Adhémar Risselin, 1877-1937) began his literary career as an art critic with Les Peintres de Bretagne (1898), before becoming involved in the Decadent Movement, under the aesthetic of which he composed a number of works, including L’Araignée rouge (1903), the one-act drama Clair de lune (1903), which was co-written by Jean Lorrain, Fabrice’s mentor, and La sorcier rouge (1910). Under the need for money, he gradually turned his attention romance novels, novels of adventure geared towards a juvenile audience, and “cine-novels” (adaptations of films into photo-novels). In all, he is credited with writing over 120 books.

Paperback, 372 pages
Release date: April 5, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-093-7
Price: US$26.00

Hardcover, 374 pages. Limited edition of 100 copies
Release date: April 5, 2022
Price: US$40.00

Reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Jan. 28, 2022 – The Red Sorcerer, by Delphi Fabrice