The Inferno

A Paris theatre success leaves the narrator restless, and he turns from drama to chemical experiments in a modest room in the Latin Quarter. With porcelain saucepans, sulphur and a furnace, he believes he has overturned accepted scientific ideas. His injured hands, unpaid bills and strained correspondence with his wife bring ambition into conflict with daily needs. When illness forces him to accept help, he begins to suspect an invisible hand guiding events.

The first-person account moves between everyday encounters and the narrator’s uneasy interpretations of them. Conversations with a Danish painter, news of a former friend’s arrest and patterns left by iron salts become entangled with fears about his destiny. Dated passages give these observations the immediacy of a diary. Readers interested in the meeting of scientific speculation, religious anxiety and personal isolation will find a voice that repeatedly turns ordinary surroundings into possible signs of unseen forces.