The Maggot People

by Henning Koch

A young man meets a woman and falls in love with her, despite her protestations that he will soon turn into "a maggot person"—a maggot-filled body topped by a still-functioning brain. Michael begins experiencing severe pains, and the young woman's prophecy begins to take hold.

231 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2012

About the author

Henning Koch is a translator from Swedish, and a fiction writer. His first book was a short story collection, "Love Doesn't Work", 2011, and he followed this up with a novel "The Maggot People", 2014, both published by Dzanc Books.

Koch's translations include works by Hannes Råstam, Artur Lundkvist, Fredrik Backman, Birgitta Stenberg, Martin Shibbye, Tom Malmquist, and Anders Rydell.

One of his Fredrik Backman translations was a 2015 nomination for the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Fiction.

Reviews

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in the premise of the book--a man turning into a "maggot person" just can't help but peak my interest--and the beginning was fairly interesting. We meet the main character, interact a bit with him, and then of course, things get a bit weird and disgusting when he sleeps with the female maggot person who infects him, making him one of them. I still could have been fine with that, though, as nasty as that sounds.

What took the book down a notch for me was the fact that he has to wiggle his way through obstacles such as the threatening Mama Maggot, priests with guns, and eventually, how to literally wiggle his way out of somewhere.

That may all sound fine and good, quite exciting, yes? To an extent. Most of it is just ludicrous and you must have an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief for this book to even begin to make it through. If you make it to the ending, you will still probably hold up your hands in discontent; is this what the book has been about the entire time because there really is nothing else to show for it, and uhh...this was the weirdest twist I've ever laid eyes on in a book. I'm still mad when I think about it.

So, was the book creepy? It definitely had a creep factor. Maggots inside of the characters cannot be taken lightly. Would I recommend reading it? Maybe just the first 50-100 pages...

[Carly Willis · Rating 2 out of 5]

How do you rate a book that felt like a fever dream

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was highly entertaining, but I thought the few great ideas didn't quite carry it over the length of a novel. The short stories in Love Doesn't Work were much tighter and more impressive, in my opinion.