Jules Verne’s long-forsaken novel about the supernatural and the un-dead, is back from the dead! Pre-dating Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, The Castle in Transylvania (Melville House), is an eerie tale of the supernatural set in a forgotten valley in the mountains of Transylvania.

We’ve just republished the novel in a beautiful new translation that does justice to Verne’s prose, and a spiffy new package, not to mention its first new translation in over a century. And, according to author Paul Di Fillipo in this wonderfully considered review in his column for the B&N Review, “Verne’s tale remains compulsively readable…”

After complimenting the translation, (“let us pay homage to the fine new translation by the experienced and talented Charlotte Mandell“) Di Fillipo goes on to say, “…this book is an illuminating rarity among Verne’s output, a Gothic-steeped romance whose scientific aspects are kept hidden till the climax.”

Not to spoil anything, but the story goes a little something like this:

In a tiny village, cut off from the outside world, unnatural events are menacing the populace. Apparitions of vampires and zombies terrorize the townsfolk who come to believe that the Devil occupies the abandoned castle looming over their town. A visitor to the region, a young count, vows to liberate the town from this thrall–pitting his reason against the forces of evil and superstition. Yet he too must confront the limits of reason when he views, in the depths of the castle, his long-dead love…

In this simple plot, Di Fillipo cites Verne as anticipating much that came after in Sci-Fi and Gothic writing, as well as your basic TV and movie suspense tropes. He even notes that while, “Verne’s handling of a love affair is anomalous and intriguing…it prefigures the then-unwritten The Phantom of the Opera in fascinating ways.”

Though unique in Verne’s oeuvre, according to Di Fillipo, “The Castle in Transylvania stands as an example of Verne at his most pleasurable and educational, exploring the remarkable reality of our simultaneous technological plummet and ascent.”