‘If I wasn’t dead, I would sue.’—Bram Stoker

This is the origin story of the first real vampyre (not Dracula).

The trouble with immortality is that eventually you get sick to death of it, and so to soothe his sickened soul, the Comte De’Ath decides to take a trip. From psychoanalysis in Vienna to blood transfusions in London, the Comte learns that a holiday is as good as a change. On the way, he meets the Queen, brings her husband back to life, helps win the Second Matabele War, matches wits with the Elephant Man, inspires Henry Ford to pursue the American Dream, almost solves the crisis in the Middle East and even falls in love. Will he become mortal again in time for his funeral in Carfax Abbey? Ah – but what a fine book this would be if we gave away the end of the story in the blurb.

From the man Ben Elton once described as ‘perhaps Australia’s finest satirist’ comes a Victorian novel for modern times. A tale of Gothic horror so bloodcurdling that it makes Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde look like they could barely write the word ‘cat’.

Author Biography

MICALLEF, Shaun Patrick, LL.B.; Australian comedian; born 18 July 1962; married, three sons; ‘educated’ Sacred Heart College and University of Adelaide; admitted to bar 1984-93; threw it all away to join the circus. Television: The Micallef P®ogram(me), SeaChange, Micallef Tonight, Newstopia, Talkin’ ’Bout Your Generation, Mad as Hell, Eve of Destruction. Books: Smithereens (2005), Preincarnate (2010), The President’s Desk (2014), Tales from a Tall Forest (2017), The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef (2018), Happily Ever Afterwards (2021), Tripping Over Myself (2022), Slivers, Shards and Skerricks (2024), Too Scared to Sleep (2024), The Impatient Glacier (2024). Leisure interests: wind farming.

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