The hidden guise of decay...

"Finally my way leads me to the vast and abandoned area of the former freight depot which has been thoroughly destroyed during the war. My longing for these crumbling ruins lets me feel my way through the torn-out railways, the wooden sleepers and multicoloured broken glass that garnishes the floor like a sheet of lost jewels. And the fading light of the day surrendering to night glitters upon these hidden jewels just as my quarter has surrendered to dilapidation. They can be encountered everywhere if one has the right vision for this sort of things: the jewels of decay, the real gems of the city, melancholy and ponderous as the viscous rain and the wailing of the wind in chimney stumps.

Estou cansado da inteligência

Four bags of books in Portuguese, which I hope to find time to read next year and discuss on CL. In the meantime, I am adding two more plaques from Tavira to my Álvaro de Campos article.

Contemporary Weird Fiction in Anglo-Saxon Countries and 21st-Century Horror

Back in 2013 I wrote a short introductory essay to the Polish weird fiction anthology Po Drugiej Stronie (published by Agharta), which serves as a tribute to S. Grabiński, H. P. Lovecraft and T. Ligotti. I was lucky to be in the fine company of Paweł Mateja, Michał Budak and Mateusz Kopacz who formed part of the jury evaluating submissions and who also provided their introductory essays (I cannot thank Mateusz enough for his encouragement to provide my own input). In my text entitled “Współczesne Weird Fiction w Krajach Anglosaskich” (“Contemporary Weird Fiction in Anglo-Saxon Countries”), I tried to provide a commentary on the condition of contemporary weird fiction with some focus on - what I consider to be - a recent revival of the weird fiction tradition accompanied by a phenomenal amount of small presses that have helped many new significant voices emerge in the field. I have also provided hints as to the names that particularly captured my attention during my massive explorations of the works in the genre throughout the previous decade - authors I am certain would appeal to Polish readers and whose books I myself would wish to find one day in my local bookstore in a Polish translation. I have now added some of these writers to my Translingual Divinations page.