Cover image for Compulsory games : and other stories
Compulsory games : and other stories
Title:
Compulsory games : and other stories
Author:
Aickman, Robert, author.
ISBN:
9781681371894
Personal Author:
Uniform Title:
Short stories. Selections.
Publication Information:
New York City :

New York Review Books,

[2018?]

©2018
Physical Description:
xvii, 341 pages ; 21 cm.
Series:
New York Review Books Classics
Contents:
Introduction: under the skin -- Compulsory games -- Hand in glove -- Marriage -- Le miroir -- No time is passing -- Raising the wind -- Residents only -- Wood -- The strangers -- The coffin house -- Letters to the postman -- Laura -- The fully-conducted tour -- A disciple of Plato -- Just a song at twilight.
Abstract:
"The best and most interesting stories by Robert Aickman, a master of the supernatural tale, the uncanny, and the truly weird. Cross Henry James with M.R. James and you might end up with a writer like Robert Aickman, though his self-described "strange stories" remain confoundingly and uniquely his own. Aickman's superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange, of the "void behind the face of order," is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames, or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress, and then another--and then another? Do a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover, this collection offers a generous introduction to a sophisticated, psychologically acute modernist whose achievements have too long been hidden under the cloak of genre"-- Provided by publisher.
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