Rich,
Sure I’d be glad to share some titles. At last after so many years of lurking I am honoured to contribute to this wonderful forum.
I’m not aware of any links between Sienkiewicz’s fiction and the supernatural tradition. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t read him since primary school. :)
I recommend Stefan Grabinski. Grabinski remains unique in Polish literature. He seems to be the only polish writer to dedicate his who whole body of works to the genre in question. As far as I know there are three collections of his stories in English:
-
The Dark Domain [
www.amazon.com]
-
The Motion Demon [
www.ash-tree.bc.ca]
-
In Sarah’s House [
www.cbeditions.com]
I think Bruno Schulz’s
The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass and
Street of Crocodiles should also be regarded as weird, particularly for the wonderfully surreal imagery.
Many supernatural themes can be found in Adam Mickiewicz’s
Forefathers’ Eve, a cycle combining folklore and mystic patriotism. It consists of 4 volumes and sometimes inspires discussions on whether it should or shouldn’t be regarded as horror fiction. If Shelley’s Frankenstein is horror then why shouldn’t Mickiewicz’s magnus opum?
Some other works by polish writers which spring to mind are Jan Potocki’s
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and Jerzy Kosinski’s
The Painted Bird, however both of these were written in foreign languages – French and English respectively. The latter is in Newman’s and Jones’ 100 Best Horror Novels list.
-------------------------------
Other European weird and quasi-weird writers worth mentioning on this thread:
- Tommaso Landolfi. Italian writer whose numerous stories are both surreal and disturbing.
- Dino Buzzati.
- Ladislav Klima (Czech writer). His gothic novel T
he Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch is available in English. I’m not sure if there are any touches of supernatural elements in it, but it’s certainly
weird. Klima has also produced some good horror stories, however I’m not aware of any translations to English.
- From weird fiction in German, besides Meyrink, Hoffmann and Ewers there is also Karl Hans Strobl ... and once again I can’t say if you can find any of his horror stories in English.
Slawek
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 15 Sep 08 | 07:00AM by yellowish haze.