Swedish Cults (Valancourt International)

A modern classic of Scandinavian horror that has been called 'Swedish Lovecraft on acid', available in English at last! Forget everything you think you know about Sweden. Anders Fager's stories reveal his native land as a place where dark and unimaginable things happen. Where deep in the woods grisly sacrifices are made to ancient and monstrous deities during blood-drenched orgies. Where two young people's road trip to visit their grandmother takes a turn for the bizarre and nightmarish. Where a woman's comfortable middle-class life is suddenly upended when her boyfriend develops a mysterious illness that leaves him with a constant erection and speaking in strange tongues. Where an avant garde artist discovers the veil that separates Stockholm from the shadowy city of Carcosa. Readers raved about Anders Fager's entry in the multi-award-nominated The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, and now Valancourt is pleased to present the first-ever complete English translation of the author's first collection, already an underground phenomenon in Sweden, France, and Italy and a cornerstone of modern Scandinavian horror. "Fager successfully sets the cosmic horror of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in his native Sweden in this unsettling collection of nine stories, proving that in the hands of an imaginative author the familiar concept of monstrous gods from other dimensions is as terrifying as ever."-Publishers Weekly "Swedish Cults is the ultimate classic of Nordic horror, comparable to what Clive Barker's The Books of Blood was for English readers in the 1980s."-Marko Hautala, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Black Tongue "Grandma's going on a journey, and so will everyone who reads this volume of very strange short stories. Fager incorporates politics, war, revenge fairies, sea monsters, and porn, spanning cultures and centuries. Sometimes his world is real and relatable, and then it is suddenly strange and disorienting. A disturbing read from a writer accomplished in the art of minimalist fiction."-Elizabeth Engstrom, author of When Darkness Loves Us and Black Ambrosia "Horrific, infectious and provocative stories about the unreliable backside of everything where men, creatures and gods are all hurting and no one is good, but a few struggle to be. Fager's writing will scar you forever."-Måns Mårlind, writer and director of The Bridge "I loved it! I thought the stories, each of which possessed a feverish, visceral intensity, were wonderfully depraved and wildly inventive. A really powerful collection."-Mark Morris, author of The Wolves of London