The Horla: A Reader's Guide
Maupassant's diary of madness — invisible being drinks milk and steals will.
Guy de Maupassant's The Horla — journal of man convinced invisible Horla visits nightly, controls him, drives him to burn house and maybe die.
Versions
1886 and expanded 1887 — paranoia escalates.
Themes
Insanity, contagion, fin-de-siècle anxiety; author later institutionalized.
French Gothic masterpiece — read with Metamorphosis energy.