The Dark Domain – Stefan Grabinski
The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski / ISBN 9781909232044 / 153-page paperback from Dedalus European Classics
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“…reading The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski is such a revelatory experience. Because here is a writer for whom supernatural horror is manifest precisely in modernity – in electricity, fire-stations, trains:the uncanny as the bad conscience of today. Sometimes Grabinski is known as the Polish Poe but this is misleading. Where Poe’s horror is agonised, a kind of extended shriek, Grabinski’s is cerebral, investigative. His protagonists are tortured and aghast, but not because they suffer at the caprice of Lovecraftian blind idiot gods: Grabinski’s universe is strange and its principles are perhaps not what we expect, but they are principles – rules- and it is in their exploration that the mystery lies. This is horror as rigour.” — China Mieville in The Guardian
“Grabinski’s commitment to a marriage of the newly announced unconscious with the supernatural gives his extravagances some conviction. These short stories offer the pleasure of myths we can crack and skillfully chilling denouements.”–David Buckley in The Observer
“Psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff”–Time Out
Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936) Polish short story writer and novelist. Studied at Lvov University before becoming a teacher. He published seven volumes of short stories, three plays and three novels all within the fantasy genre.
