Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt. This edition contains a new introduction which shows how Lewis played with convention, ranging from gruesome realism to social comedy, and even parodied the Gothic genre in which he was writing.