In Sublunar, Danish writer Harald Voetmann returns to the world of Renaissance alchemy, religious obsession and the exploits between knowledge and madness.

Set against the intellectual and spiritual upheavals of early modern Europe, the novel follows the assistants of two alchemists, Erik Lange and Falk Gøye, as they labour over furnaces, experiments and increasingly obscure promises of transformation.

Voetmann's writing moves between historical fiction, grotesque comedy and philosophical speculation. Alchemical procedures become entangled with questions of faith, bodily corruption, sexual appetite and the pursuit of immortality. Illustrated with historical engravings, the book is as interested in the absurdity of human ambition as in its capacity for invention. Its atmosphere comes from treating the fantastic and the material with equal seriousness: gold, flesh, fire, scripture and superstition all belong to the same unstable system of understanding.

Edition/Condition: Lolli Editions, 2023. First English-language edition, translated from the Danish by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen. Paperback with illustrated interiors. Very good condition, with minor superficial cover wear and clean internal pages.