“Alraune” by Hanns Heinz Ewers

"Alraune" by Hanns Heinz Ewers

"This is Hanns Heinz Ewers most famous decadent novel, newly translated and uncensored for the first time in the English language. Inspired by medieval beliefs in the occult properties of the mandrake root (alraune), which was thought to grow under gallows from the fallen semen of hanged men, an arrogant student, Frank Braun, persuades his vicious uncle, Jacob ten Brinken, to create a child through artificial insemination using sperm from a condemned man and a prostitute as the mother. The child, Alraune, grows into an extremely beautiful but thoroughly perverse young woman with a mysterious power to subject others and to bring riches and ruination."