On a stormy night in 1813, a doctor is called to the aid of two prostitutes in c
hildbirth. To one is born a healthy girl, Henriette, to the other, what can only
be described as a monster: a boy, Hercules, deaf-mute and hideously deformed, a
nd with the power to read minds. As he tells the story of Hercules' bizarre and
colourful life, which leads him from the bordello of his birth to a travelling f
reak show and then a Jesuit monastery and an asylum, Vallgren paints a magical p
icture of nineteenth-century Europe.
