Night Voices Night Journeys

This massive collection of original stories and articles inspired by the 'Cthulhu Mythos' created by H.P. Lovecraft was published in Japan in 2002 as a two-volume set under the name Hishinkai. The list of contributing authors is a who's-who of Japanese horror fiction, featuring some of the finest writers in Japan today. In cooperation with Tokyo Sogensha, the Japanese publishers, and the anthology editor, Mr. Asamatsu Ken, we are proud to present these dark visions of the Mythos as interpreted by Japanese authors. You will find some stories that return like old friends, carrying on the Lovecraft tradition, while others will shock you with totally new and unexpected vistas of horror. Each story is accompanied by a thought-provoking introduction by Robert M. Price, the recognized master of the Mythos. The cover is by Yamada Akihiro, who has handled many of the covers for the Japanese-language editions of Lovecraft and other Mythos works, and has established a name for himself in the States as well.

One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won María Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino. In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin," a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes. Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor," the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.

Night Voices tells the little-known story of young Polish Jewish idealists, survivors of the Holocaust, who chose to support Poland's post-war communist government in the belief that socialism offered the path to a more just society. It is the story of Poland in the years leading up to the war, the horrors Polish Jews faced during the Nazi occupation, the brief period of hope when they believed they were building a better society, and their gradual disillusionment as state sponsored corruption, brutality, Stalinist paranoia, and anti-Semitism developed. The story is told through the memories of four people, Stasia Alapin Rubilowicz, her husband Mietek Rubilowicz, her son Peter Alapin, and her friend Alina. Life in Poland before and during the war is seen primarily through Stasia's eyes, who evokes her youth in an affluent family, largely assimilated into Polish society. This life was shattered forever in her early adulthood when the Nazis invaded, bringing death and destruction to Poland and to Polish Jews in particular. She recounts the anguish of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, her escape from it, her survival on the run, her betrayal to the Gestapo by a woman who had known her at school, and her rescue from prison by Christian Polish friends at the risk of their lives. In the second half of the book we are introduced to Mietek and her friend Alina, who describe their experiences in Poland during and after the war and their hopes that communism would rid the country of bigotry injustice, and want. But as old hatreds, now supported by a perverted catechism of socialist dogma, reawakened anti-Semitism they became increasingly disillusioned, ultimately deciding they had no recourse but to leave Poland and start a new life elsewhere. By 1968 the Polish communist leadership, through a campaign of intimidation and harassment, had succeeded in ridding Poland of virtually all its surviving Jews. Night Voices is a testimony both to the strength of the human spirit and to our capacity for self-delusion.

Inspired by the Lovecraft's more optimistic writings, this unique collection spotlights the weird works of nine current horror and fantasy authors, including the award-winning Michael Cisco and Livia Llewellyn. Also includes Clark Ashton Smith's 1931 "The City of the Singing Flame" and Lovecraft's own "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

They can be heard in the dead of night...stories strange, humorous, and haunting....

One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won María Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino. In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin," a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes. Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor," the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.