Cover of The Shadow at the Bottom of the World

The Shadow at the Bottom of the World

A longtime Lovecraft devotee, who has extended the weird tale to the next level via the likes of Borges and Burroughs, Thomas Ligotti is usually published as part of a general anthology of horror writers. But now Ligotti has pulled together a collection of his favorite fiction, both old and new, representing his best and most characteristic works.Thomas Ligotti's stories are perhaps best described as dark magical realism. Many of his stories center on the distorted perspective of a frequently doomed narrator. The title story, "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World," reimagines a kind of Bradbury-like small town that encounters the appearance of a kind of existential darkness, written with a sharp imagery like that of William S. Burroughs. In story after story in this collection, Ligotti does not merely present his readers with isolated incidents of supernatural horror - he challenges them to confront nightmares that are entwined in the very fabric of life itself.

Read more

QUOTES:

"The best new American writer of weird fiction to appear in years" - The Washington Post

"Ligotti is wonderfully original; he has a new vision of a dark and special kind, a vision that no one had before him." - Interzone

"Aficianados of the macabre consider Ligotti one of the finest writers in the field" - The Sunday Times

"Thomas Ligotti is an absolute master of supernatural horror and weird fiction, and a true original. He pursues his unique vision with admirable honesty and rigorousness and conveys it in prose as powerfully evocative as any writer in the field. I'd say he might just be a genius." - Ramsey Campbell ("Britain's most respected living horror writer," according to the Oxford Companion toEnglish Literature)

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 259 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Shadow at the Bottom of the World? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Shadow at the Bottom of the World. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. At Fear's Altar Shares horror, weird fiction, short stories
  2. Burnt Black Suns Shares horror, short stories, weird fiction
  3. Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991 Shares horror, short stories, weird fiction
  4. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories Shares horror, short stories, weird fiction

“People who read The Shadow at the Bottom of the World tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed
  2. The White Hands and Other Weird Tales
  3. Lesser Demons
  4. Our Lady Of Darkness

“If you want more of the same (horror), start with these.”

  1. The Nameless Dark: A Collection
  2. A Season in Carcosa
  3. Autumn in the Abyss
  4. Children of Lovecraft

“If it was the short stories that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Moon Will Look Strange
  2. The Night Ocean
  3. The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
  4. Free onlineFree Medusa's Coil

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Fiction: Complete and Unabridged
  2. H.P. Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Tales: The Roots of Modern Horror
  3. A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
  4. Best New Horror 1