Audiobook · read by volunteers
Parasite
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
Read by Carl Vonnoh, III · 4 chapters · 1 h 58
About the book
Austin Gilroy is a young physiologist who trusts only what can be measured. His friend Professor Wilson holds that the human mind has powers science has not yet admitted, and he is eager to bring Gilroy round. An evening at Wilson's house is arranged, with a demonstration of what might be called psychic influence. Gilroy leaves unconvinced, though a little shaken. Then a woman of unsettling presence enters his life, and his comfortable certainties begin to loosen. Conan Doyle, better known for his detective, here turns to a darker and more unnerving kind of mystery, one in which the danger is not a footprint or a forged letter but the will of another person pressing on your own. At two hours and in four chapters, this is a compact story of suspicion, obsession and the limits of reason, well suited to a single sitting after dark.
Introduction
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born in 1859 and died in 1930, is remembered above all for Sherlock Holmes, but he wrote in many other veins: historical adventure, science fiction, and a good deal of fiction touching on the supernatural. The Parasite, published in 1894, belongs to this last group. It is a short novel, close to a long story, and it was written in the decades when hypnotism, mesmerism and what was then called psychical research fascinated the educated public.
That setting matters. Doyle himself was a physician by training, and he later became a committed believer in spiritualism, so his interest in the borderlands of science and the occult was no mere pose. In this story the tension between a rational man of laboratory habits and a world that refuses to behave rationally is the engine of the plot. It gives the tale an unease that depends less on ghosts than on the loss of control over one's own mind.
The recording was made by volunteers of the LibriVox project. It runs to about two hours and is divided into four chapters, so it can be heard in one evening or over a couple of nights.
Why listen today? Because the story anticipates later fears about manipulation and dependence, and because Doyle tells it with a clear economy that never wastes a page. If you only know him through Holmes, this is an interesting and slightly disturbing change of register.
Public domain
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text