The House of Hunger was originally published in by Heinemann in 1978. The book is a collection of harrowing, autobiographical short stories in which Marechera’s experiences both in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and as a university student at Oxford, are channeled into a psychedelic cascade of blistering imagery and broken stream-of-consciousness narratives. In his own words, writing in English - his second language - rather than the Shona he grew up speaking, meant confronting the inherent...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 33
Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo was originally published in Spanish in 1955. The book is published by Serpent’s Tail, the translation is by Margaret Sayers Peden and the readings in this episode are by Jakub Blank. The book concerns the journey of a young man to his mother’s native village of Comala, where he will search for his father, the elusive figure, Pedro Páramo. What he finds upon his arrival is a ghost town, the spectral image of a once vital community whose voices rise up to assail him with ...
Aug 05, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 32
In this episode, I spoke to the writer, Rebecca Lloyd, about her novel, The Child Cephalina (2019), which is published by Tartarus Press: Rebecca Lloyd’s superb Gothic novel explores friendship, obsession and the uncanny in teeming mid-Victorian London. At its heart is a tale of human relationships threatened by an unknowable force.’ From the very first, the child Cephalina brought conflict into the otherwise peaceful, if eccentric, household at number 12 Judd Street. Robert’s fascination with h...
Jul 18, 2020•53 min•Ep. 31
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy was originally published in Italian in 1989. The translation is by Tim Parks, and the book is published by And Other Stories. The novel concerns the early years in the life of a young student at an exclusive boarding school in the Swiss mountains. Throughout the book, her strained relationship with her environment, her peers, and her inner self are subject to cold examination. In crystalline, almost clinical, prose, all is dissected and laid bare - the in...
May 14, 2020•53 min•Ep. 30
I’m joined by Stefan Głowacki to discuss Cinnamon Shops, a collection of short stories by Bruno Schulz, which was originally published in Polish in 1934. In this episode, we discuss this classic of Polish literature in its most recent translation by Madeline G. Levine, which is published by Northwestern University Press. The readings are by Marceli Sommer. In these magnificent autobiographical stories, Schulz writes about the sleepy town of Drohobych where grew up, transforming it into a mythica...
Apr 19, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 29
Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren was originally published in 1975. Since its publication, Dhalgren has had its fair share of proponents and enemies - it has been called both the best and the worst book ever to come out of the field of science fiction. Over the course of its eight-hundred pages, we follow our main character, the Kid, as he wanders listlessly through devastated city of Bellona, located somewhere in the United States on the border between utopia and dystopia. It is a city where time dil...
Apr 10, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 28
The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers was originally published in Spanish in 1950. The translation was made by Kit Maude and the book is published by The Feminist Press. On her thirtieth birthday, the main character, Rebeca Linke undergoes a violent physical and mental transformation. She leaves her home in only an overcoat and wanders through the local forests and fields. When she is spotted in broad daylight, divested of her clothes, the event sends tremors through the rural village, penetrating t...
Feb 08, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 27
Octavia Butler’s Bloochild and Other Stories was originally published in 1995. The book collects seven stories from throughout Butler’s career, and in this episode we focus on the title story, which depicts a social and sexual relationship between humans and a race of alien beings. Later, we discuss the penultimate story in the collection, Amnesty, which explores the complexities of confrontation with the alien other. Over the course of the episode, we examine the degree to which the stories may...
Dec 05, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 26
Jean Ray’s The Mainz Psalter was originally published in 1930. We read the story in Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s anothology, The Weird, and the translation is by Lowell Blair. The story tells the grizzly tale of The Mainz Psalter, a ship en route to Greenland under the ownership of the shadowy figure of the schoolmaster, with a purpose that remains a mystery to its crew. As the ship sails deeper into northern waters, reality begins to bend in peculiar directions and the crew’s number dwindles. Thos...
Oct 30, 2019•53 min•Ep. 25
Caradoc Prichard’s One Moonlit Night was originally published in Welsh in 1961. The book is a classic of Welsh literature, which though greatly admired in its native country, is still shamefully neglected in the English-speaking world. Set in a small village in North Wales, One Moonlit Night is the breathless monologue of a young boy who unveils the sorrows and torments, the ecstasies and revelations of a poverty stricken, but close-knit community as it weathers the distant storm of the First Wo...
Oct 27, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 24
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MIrrlees was originally published in 1926. Lud-in-the-Mist is the capital of the fictional free state of Dorimare, a country which shares a border with Fairyland, just across The Debatable Hills. Centuries ago, under the rule of Duke Aubrey, Fairy things had been part of life and culture in Dorimare. After a violent revolution, a new merchant class took over the country. Duke Aubrey was expelled and all mention of Fairies and Fairy lore became taboo. The smuggling of hall...
Sep 23, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 23
The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas was originally published in Nynorsk in 1957, and is available from Peter Owen books and now as a Penguin Modern Classics edition. The translation is by Michael Barnes and Torbjorn Stoverud. The central character of The Birds is Mattis, a mentally disabled man, living with his sister in a small rural community in Norway. We observe Mattis as he attempts to navigate the obstacles of everyday life - the obligations of work, family relationships and even romantic love. Mat...
Jul 19, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 22
On this episode of Sherds Podcast, I’m joined by writer, Quentin S. Crisp, to discuss his new novel, Graves (2019), published by Snuggly Books, who give the following description of the book: In Graves, Damien, a male nurse and self-styled ‘thanatophile’, is in love with death in its purer and more ideal form. However, as he casts around for some authentic way to defy the void of modernity, his thanatophilia is swiftly and insidiously corrupted. Scavenging what ‘materials’ he can, he works in is...
May 26, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 21
In this episode, I’m joined by Patricia Pulham, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Surrey, to discuss Vernon Lee’s collection of supernatural tales, Hauntings (1890). The book collects four of Vernon Lee’s ghost stories, ‘Amour Dure’, ‘Dionea’, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, and ‘A Wicked Voice’, which together represent some of the finest examples of the genre, and reflect Lee’s deep engagement with Italian art, her sensitivity to place, and her imaginative relationship with the vestigi...
Apr 29, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 20
D. O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons was first published in 1938; it marks the first full-length novel published in Yoruba and has become a classic work of African literature. The delightfully rich translation is by the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka and is published by City Lights Books. The book concerns the life of the brave hunter, Akara-Ogun, whose encounters with spirits, bog-trolls and other supernatural creatures are related orally with great flair for an enraptured audience which ...
Apr 22, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 19
The Witches of Kyiv and Other Gothic Tales collects a range of stories by Ukrainian Romantic author, Orest Somov which were originally published between 1827 and 1833. This collection comes from Sova Books and the translations are by Svitlana Yakovenko. The book also features a helpful glossary and annotations, as well as excellent introduction by Svitlana Krys. Though written in Russian, these gothic tales draw heavily on Ukrainian folklore, and introduce a distinctly regional flavour to the pa...
Mar 31, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 18
Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall was originally published in German in 1963. Our protagonist and narrator is a woman in her 40s. While visiting friends at a hunting lodge in rural Austria, she finds herself divorced from all human contact when an invisible wall descends, cutting her small region off from the rest of the world. She is quickly forced into a struggle to survive, and must learn to become self-sufficient. Willingly or not, she must become the ruler of her own destiny. Often interpreted as...
Mar 04, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 17
One contemporary reviewer referred to The Hill of Dreams as the “study, rather than the story, of a morbid temperament.” Often regarded as Machen’s masterpiece, this beautiful and idiosyncratic novel concerns the short life of a young writer, Lucian Taylor, and follows his journey from the Welsh countryside of his boyhood to the squalor of late 19th-century London. In an attempt to commune with a reality beyond our own, a plane of existence accessible only to the true artistic visionary, Lucian ...
Feb 02, 2019•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 16
Ghada Samman’s ‘Beirut Nightmares’ was originally published in Arabic in 1976. Set at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, this autobiographical novel concerns two weeks in the life of a journalist and writer living at the heart of the warzone. With the conflict raging outside, and snipers on every corner, she is unable to leave her flat. The horror of the waking world soon finds its way into the dreamscape where disembodied limbs roam the flaming streets, and mannequins come to life. Over the ...
Dec 19, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 15
Edogawa Rampo’s short story, ‘The Human Chair’,was originally published in Japanese in 1925. The story is taken from the collection, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by James B. Harris, and published by Tuttle Publishing. ‘The Human Chair’ is a tale of the grotesque in which a master carpenter entombs himself inside a chair in order to gain the intimacy that society has denied him. The longer he spends inside the chair, pressed close to the bodies of strangers, the harder it...
Oct 30, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 14
Karel van de Woestijne’s novella, ‘The Dying Peasant’, was originally published in Dutch in 1918. It is now available for the first time in an unabridged translation by Paul Vincent, published by Snuggly Books. The book concerns an elderly farmer, Nand, who lies on his deathbed and is visited by five figures, each representing the one of the five senses. As the fragmentary reflections occasioned by these sensory avatars tell the rich story of Nand’s life, van de Woestijne evokes a deep reverence...
Oct 28, 2018•55 min•Ep. 13
Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker was originally published in 1980. The novel is set in Kent some two or three thousand years after a nuclear holocaust which has destroyed the land, plunging society back to iron-age levels of technology. Its foundational myth, the Eusa story, grown out of the scattered fragments of ancient history, is the story of how technological progress led to the nuclear war and the long dark age which is referred to as “Bad Time.” After the death of his father in an accident ...
Sep 23, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 12
Anna Kavan’s Ice was originally published in 1967 by Peter Owen books. The book is Kavan’s final and best known work, and appeared just one year before her death. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, society is rapidly crumbling as a wall of ice threatens to engulf the entire planet. Our unnamed narrator roams through this barren, frozen wasteland in pursuit of a young girl with a halo of hair as bright as spun glass; his designs on her are decidedly sinister. The novel proceeds with the torturous...
Aug 14, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 11
Hans Henny Jahnn was a German organ-builder, playwright and novelist. In this episode, we look at the only novel of his available in English, The Ship (1949), a beguilingly dark, allegorical tale set aboard a wooden ship with blood red sails which embarks upon an unknown mission, carrying an unknown cargo, a mystery to both captain and crew. The reasons for the journey are perhaps understood only by the shady figure of the supercargo as well as the shipowner, whose presence is as uncertain as th...
Jul 10, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 10
‘The Wind’ concerns the fate of Letty, a young girl plucked out of a life of ease in Virginia and forced to move to the plains of Sweetwater, Texas at the height of a terrible drought in the 1880s. Letty struggles to acclimatise in this new, hostile environment – its ugly, arid vistas and its harsh manners – but it is the incessant wind that strikes her most deeply. As her isolation increases, she begins mentally to imbue the wind with supernatural power, coming to believe that it intends to des...
Jun 20, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 9
In this episode, we discuss Mary Butts's novel of 1928, 'Armed with Madness'. Over the course of the programme, we consider the possible reasons for the descent of Butts' reputation, the mythological and literary underpinnings of the novel, and think about the ways in which her it expands the palette of we think of as modernism.
May 26, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 8
Jasieński's 'I Burn Paris' upset the French authorities enough to have him expelled from the country on the novel's publication. The story concerns a plague that breaks out in Paris, exposing the worst tendencies of the city's inhabitants. As the death toll rises, groups begin to isolate themselves according to ethnicity, nationality and ideology. In today's political climate, the book is perhaps more relevant than ever and serves as a stark warning about the perils of isolationism.
Mar 31, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 7
In this episode, I'm joined by Stefan Glowacki to discuss Tadeusz Rózewicz's long poem, 'Et in Arcadia Ego' (1961). Over the course of the episode, we consider how the poem might be thought of as Rózewicz's idiosyncratic 'Italian Journey', written in response not only to Goethe's text, but as an attempt to confront the ghosts of classicisim, a journey undertaken to see if the ideals of Western art can still be found among the wreckage of postwar Europe.
Mar 04, 2018•55 min•Ep. 6
In this episode, we look at Algernon Blackwood's story, 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved', which was published in his collection 'Pan's Garden' (1912). The story concerns David and Sophia Bittacy, a married couple living on the edge of the New Forest. Under the influence of the bohemian painter, Sanderson, David becomes increasingly obsessed with the inner life of the trees in the neighbouring forest. Over the course of our discussion, we consider Algernon Blackwood's place in the Gothic tradition,...
Jan 14, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 5
In this episode, we look at Zyranna Zateli's 'At Twilight They Return' (1993), translated by David Connolly. Set during the final decades of the 19th century, the novel tells the vivid and meandering history of several generations of a single family in northern Greece. As the modern world begins to encroach upon the ancient, the border between the mythic and the real becomes porous, and in Zateli's hands, both are able to exist in a perpetual twilight. Over the course of our discussion, we consi...
Dec 03, 2017•56 min•Ep. 4
