The Nightmare Factory

This collection, bringing together the contents of several of Ligotti's short story collections, is a hefty volume that shows what an incredible body of work Ligotti has built up over the years. He is a master of the short form, writing prose that is uncomfortable and subtle, unfolding events that often appear off the page but whose resonances continue to run all through the collection. The opening tale, The Frolic, throws you straight into the deep end of Ligotti's unique form of terror. At first a seemingly harmless tale with a man talking of his work with a confined psychotic, it finishes with a far more personal and chilling flourish. It progresses with an assorted collection of tales that move in the shadows, sometimes bordering on the surreal, that slowly insinuate themselves into the reader. Sometimes there will be a shocking twist, or a satisfying final dénouement, but always it comes back to that sense of growing unease. The final tale The Red Tower is a surreal masterpiece about a strange manufacturing plant and it closes the collection with a perfect, unnerving chill.

Some of the other highlights in the collection are: Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes, a story about a hypnotist and his rather special assistant; The Last Feast of Harlequin, a long story about a man's investigation into a strange festival; Teatro Grottesco, a story about a strange afflication striking down artists. These are merely the tip of the iceburg though, a small part of the multitude of great works in this collection.

The Nightmare Factory Carroll & Graf Books. Thomas Ligotti, in his own words, writes of 'a world that both surpasses and menaces this one.' A large and generally very impressive gathering of imaginative and stylish horror fiction, adding several new stories to those culled from Ligotti's previous collections Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1990), Grimscribe (1991), and Noctuary (1993). Poe and Lovecraft are the obvious influences in these richly atmospheric (and often funny) tales of introversion blossoming into obsession, and of. 'The Nightmare Factory' graphic novel adapts four of Ligotti's short stories: 'The Last Feast of Harlequin,' 'Dream of a Mannikin,' 'Dr. Locrian's Asylum,' and Teatro Grottesco.' What's particularly intriguing about this project is that Ligotti isn't a household name to most mainstream horror fans; in fact, 'The Washington Post' called him.

Don't let the length put you off, it is a book to be savoured in pieces, to be read when the mood takes you; though more often than not, the act of putting it down after reading a tale is followed by the act of picking it up again.

Contents

The Frolic
Les Fleurs
Alice's Last Adventure
Dream of a Mannikin
The Chymist
Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes
Eye of the Lynx
The Christmas Eve of Aunt Elise
The Lost Art of Twilight
The Troubles of Dr. Thoss
Masquerade of a Dead Sword
Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech
Dr. Locrian's Asylum
The Sect of the Idiot
The Greater Festival of Masks
The Music of the Moon
The Journal of J.P. Drapeau
Vastarien
The Last Feast of Harlequin
The Spectacles in the Drawer
Flowers of the Abyss
Nethescurial
The Dreaming in Nortown
The Mystics of Muelenburg
In the Shadow of Another World
The Cocoons
The Night School
The Glamour
The Library of Byzantium
Miss Plarr
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
The Medusa
Conversations in a Dead Language
The Prodigy of Dreams
Mrs Rinaldi's Angel
The Tsalal
Mad Night of Atonement
The Strange Design of Master Rignolo
The Voice in the Bones
Teatro Grottesco
Severini
Gas Station Carnivals
The Bungalow House
The Clown Puppet
The Red Tower

Bibliographic Information

UK P/B - Raven 1996, 1-85487-436-5
US P/B - Carroll & Graf Publishers 1996, 0786703024

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Awards:

“My Work Is Not Yet Done”, Long Fiction, 2002

The Nightmare Factory Thomas Ligotti

“The Red Tower”, Long Fiction, 1996

The Nightmare Factory, Fiction Collection, 1996

The Nightmare Factory Ligotti

Nominations:

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Non-fiction, 2010

“The Bungalow House”, Short Fiction, 1995

The Nightmare Factory Thomas Ligotti Pdf

BIO: Thomas Ligotti was born in Detroit in 1953. Among the most acclaimed horror writers of the past thirty years, he has received three Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award, and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in South Florida. Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.

Ligotti’s stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below.

2021.08