Every night Hilda has a nightmare. She finds herself acting out a reincarnation of thirteenth-century Princess Hildegard, and an ecclesiastical court hell-bent on punishment wants to condemn her for witchcraft, incest, parricide, matricide, and fornication with demons. The punishments available include every torture instrument imaginable, and then some, though the crazed members of the court need Hilda to stay alive so they can experiment with as many ways they can think of to use her. Hilda’s nightmare is a veritable brothel of inquisition.

Together with her sister Sandra, Hilda visits the psychiatrist Dr Baalt, who carries out several ‘repatriations’ for Hilda. It gradually becomes clear that Hilda’s dreams reflect real events from the past, and that Baalt is playing some sort of diabolical game. Can Hilda escape the doctor’s evil influence?

Set very much in the Sadean tradition, Hilda’s experiences are horribly but brilliantly brought to life by Bernard Dufossé’s pen, here under the pseudonym of Hanz Kovacq. Nowhere else will you find a vocabulary as imaginative as his ‘Aarrogll! Horgh! Harch! Harf!’

Here we bring you just the first of the four volumes of Hilda; the sequels were published  in 2000 (Vol.2), 2002 (Vol.3) and 2008 (Vol. 4). Unfortunately, and presumably because of the almost impossibility of translating Dufossé’s dense language, Hilda is only available in French, but this is the perfect time to learn some very colourful français.

Hilda was published by Internationale Presse Edition’s Bédéadult imprint.