The Ravaged Night: A Novel

Summary

A band of teenage misfits. A town rotting from the inside out. An abandoned house that feeds on their deepest fears and darkest desires. This haunted house tale—in the tradition of Stephen King's coming-of-age horrors—comes from one of France's most celebrated literary stars

In a quiet suburb in the mid-1990s, nothing ever seems to happen. Then a teenage boy dies, and the adults are quick to call it suicide.

His friends aren’t so sure.

Drawn together by grief, boredom, and a creeping sense that something is terribly wrong, a group of teens begins to fixate on an abandoned house at the end of a cul-de-sac—a place everyone avoids, although no one can explain why. Once the gang crosses its threshold, they find that, somehow, the house seems to know them—showing them what they long for most, feeding on their fears, their shame, their secret rage.

As the line between nightmare and waking life erodes, the group is forced to confront not only the house’s sinister power, but the violence, cruelty, and despair festering inside their families and their town. What begins as a dare becomes an obsession—and then a reckoning.

The Ravaged Night is a coming-of-age horror novel from one of France’s most brilliant novelists about friendship, desire, and the terrible cost of growing up. An exhilarating celebration of Stephen King and the cult slasher film, this is a story about the places that shape us—and the ones that devour us.