Exemplary Departures consists of five exquisitely wrought novellas
depicting five "exemplary" deaths in various exotic locations around the
globe: a gentleman spy disappears with his secrets into the Malaysian
jungle; a young woman agonizes atop a ruined castle overlooking the
Rhine; a writer succumbs to alcoholism in the streets of Baltimore; a
salesman expires as a vagabond in the sewers of New York; and
hermaphroditic twins are assassinated in a stagecoach. Drawing from the
remnants of real-life anecdotes--from Edgar Allan Poe's final days to
the agonizing tale of Idilia Dubb--these stories are imagined descents
into death's supreme indifference. A true modern inheritor of the legacy
of the French Decadent writers, Wittkop spins these tales with her
trademark macabre elegance and chilling humor, maneuvering in an
uncertain space between dark Romanticism, Gothic Expressionism and
Sadean cruelty. "Death is life's most important moment," Wittkop
claimed; Exemplary Departures offers five particularly important
moments for the English reader's delectation. First published as a set
of three novellas in 1995, this translation is of the 2012 edition of
five novellas, which include the previously unpublished "Mr. T.'s Last
Secret" and "Claude and Hippolyte."
