A01=Claude Seignolle
Author_Claude Seignolle
Category=FKC
Category=FKW
Category=FYT
creepy
curse
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
folk horror
folklore
forthcoming
France
ghost
pagan
rural
unsettling
Product details
- ISBN 9780712369817
- Publication Date: 03 Dec 2026
- Publisher: British Library Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Widely regarded as Seignolle’s masterpiece, The Unwelcome take the reader to the rural Sologne region of a hundred years ago, when night was terrifying and a lingering scent of witchcraft was just as acceptable to the people in its hamlets as any modern scientific advances. Against this eerie backdrop, sixteen-year-old Jeanne is out of control – burning hayricks and playing jealous lovers off against each other with terrible consequences – but can she really be blamed for her behaviour when a sense of evil seems to linger around her family like morning mist over the cursed local marsh?
The answer lies in a discovery made by her father, Moarc’h, a generation before, when he dug the ceramic head of a pagan statue from a plough furrow and installed it at the family farm. Dreadful things happened then; just as dreadful things are happening now. And as the ghosts of the past both literally and figuratively descend on the descendants of Moarc’h, the horrors that seem to swirl around Jeanne become impossible to ignore.
Claude Seignolle (1917-2018) was originally a folklorist and archaeologist before he turned his hand to writing. He spent most of his life in the Sologne region, where The Unwelcome – originally published in English under its French title of La Malvenue – and much of his other fiction is set. His legacy continues in his home country thanks to the annual Prix Claude Seignolle, which is awarded to the best novel that draws on French folklore.
