The Ravaged Night

In the 1990s, in a housing estate on the outskirts of Toulouse, it seems nothing ever happens. Then a boy dies, and the adults are quick to call it suicide.

Connected by grief, boredom and a creeping sense that something is terribly wrong, the boy’s friends are drawn to an abandoned house that exerts a strange power over them—it seems to offer an alternate reality that is both nightmarish and a sinister sanctuary.

At the same time, the group is forced to confront the violence and despair festering inside their families and their town. What begins as a dare becomes an obsession—and then a reckoning. Their story could be our own.

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, whose novels include Animalia and Son of Man, is one of France’s most brilliant writers. With shades of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King, The Ravaged Night is about friendship, the loss of innocence and the places that devour us.

‘A love song to youth and horror in the 1990s—it’s so unflinching, so close, it feels like now.’ Mariana Enriquez, author of Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave

‘A sublime homage from Del Amo to Stephen King, the master of the genre.’ Elle Magazine

‘The challenge: how can one write horror from which beauty and melancholy would emerge? A successful gamble, as the book will also appeal to readers who are not usually drawn to the genre…Perhaps one of the best novels of the year.’ Vanity Fair

‘This is the best horror novel I've read in years. An ode to the devastating loneliness of adolescence and, at the same time, a nightmare of imagined, unbridled carnality.’ Fernanda Melchor, author of Hurricane Season