When a young Dublin student goes to pay his last respects to his dying
uncle, he never imagines that he might chance upon a terrifying family
secret. Who is the sinister old man in the portrait and why is his uncle
so anxious for him to burn it? Why is the Spanish man who saves him from
drowning so frightened when he hears the name Melmoth?
As he digs deeper into the mystery, an intricate and blood-chilling
story begins to unfold. For the past two hundred years, the accursed
Melmoth has been searching desperately for an escape from the infernal
bargain he once made. Melmoth has traversed the globe leaving
destruction and misery in his wake, from Inquisition-era Spain to a
remote island in the Indian Ocean - and there have been recent sightings
of him in County Wicklow, where our narrator is still piecing the story
together.
This Victorian classic has captured the imaginations of readers since
1820 and inspired numerous other gothic masterpieces, including Oscar
Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sarah Perry's novel Melmoth.