The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Wojnicz is the protagonist of The Empusium. His arrival in the small town and his enrollment in the sanatorium is the impetus for the narrative, while the mystery surrounding his identity is one of the novel’s key intrigues. Wojnicz is a dislocated figure, feeling alienated and alone. He is an intersex person, meaning that a society that divides the world into two genders cannot accommodate him. With this, the gendered languages he speaks (German and Polish) lack the nuance to express any true sense of Wojnicz’s self. In a world where even Dr. Semperweiss’s flashy Mercedes has a gender attributed to it by the language, Wojnicz feels as though there is no place for him. In a linguistic and mental sense, he is as disembodied and as ephemeral as the steam on the station platform, as the mist that separates the town from the forest.

Wojnicz’s lifelong quest for acceptance has turned him into a locus point for competing versions of gender identity. For his entire life, people have lectured him on how to be a man, even though he feels that their versions of masculinity do not apply to him. Since his mother died when he was young, Wojnicz was raised by his chauvinistic father.