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The New Uncanny

Tales of Unease

Edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page

The New Uncanny
Categories: 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, Anthologies, British
Imprint: Comma Press
Publisher: Comma Press
Available as:
  • Description
  • Editors
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Featuring
    Adam Marek, Ian Duhig, Alison MacLeod, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Hanif Kureishi, Jane Rogers, Ramsey Campbell, A.S. Byatt, Nicholas Royle, Etgar Keret, Matthew Holness, Christopher Priest, Sara Maitland & Gerard Woodward

    In 1919 Sigmund Freud published an essay that delved deep into the tradition of horror writing and claimed to understand one of its darkest tricks. Like a mad scientist, he performed literary vivisection on a still-breathing body of work, exploring its inner anatomy, and pulling out mysterious organs for classification. His aim: to present to the world a complete theory of ‘das unheimliche’, the uncanny.

    In the spirit of this great experiment, 14 leading authors have here been challenged to write fresh fictional interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century, to update Freud’s famous checklist of what gives us the creeps, and to give the hulking canon of uncanny fiction a shot in the arm, a shock to the neck-bolts...

    Ra Page
    Ra Page is the founder and Editorial Manager of Comma Press. He’s the editor of numerous anthologies, including The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories (Penguin, 1999), co-editor of The New Uncanny (winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, 2008) and Litmus, voted one of 2011’s books of the year ... read more
    Awards won by Ra Page Winner, 2012  Financial Times Book of the Year
    (Shi Cheng)
     'A bold idea.' - the Guardian  'If we need the uncanny - and I suspect we do - then we also need it updating... laudable.' - Book of the Week, the Independent. 'A masterclass in understated creepiness... a deliciously macabre collection that the old Austrian might well have enjoyed.' - Book of the Week, Time Out  'Delightful and disturbing'- the Independent on Sunday  'It's not too great a stretch to see Comma as the literary equivalent of Factory Records.' - the Herald  'If we need the uncanny --and I suspect we do -- then we also need it updating... laudable.'
    Book of the Week, The Independent
    'A masterclass in understated creepiness... a deliciously macabre collection that the old Austrian might well have enjoyed.'
    Book of the Week, Time Out
    'Delightful and disturbing.'
    The Independent on Sunday
     'It's not too great a stretch to see Comma as the literary equivalent of Factory Records.'
    The Herald
    Praise for Ra Page 'Read this book.'
    Liz Lochhead
    'An agreeably accomplished collection populated, as promised, by some intriguing characters.'
    City Life
    'Get with the zeitgeist and buy yourself a copy of Bracket.'
    Leeds Guide
    'Fills you with hope for the form.'
    Time Out
    'Short fiction is in good hands.'
    The Independent
    'An inspiring tribute to inquiring minds.'
    The Guardian
    'A very alive, illuminating and good-natured collection.'
    The Observer
    'The pairings work brilliantly, giving stereoscopic vision... ingenious... unfailingly interesting.'
    The Independent
    'Exquisite... delectable.'
    New Scientist
    'There is something about the defiance of language in this story.'
    China Daily
    'On balance, [the editors] perform a valu­able service in making these rich, varied and rewarding stories known to a western audience, for all that the politics of cultural engagement remain fraught.'
    Financial Times
    'These stories tell us how the lives of these cities and citizens, or peasants-turned-citizens, are being tempered. The stories seem to say that one has to go through the fires of hell to reach some different stage of existence.'
    The Independent
    'Shi Cheng is a sort of mind map of both modern China, and also of what it’s like to be human.'
    Asian Books Blog
    'An exhilarating read.'
    The Short Review 
    'Fascinating reading.'
    Financial Times
    'It might have been of interest to these pre-Mansfield masters to learn that there was a hidden country of prose out there; great short story writers, then and now, create countries of their own.'
    Michael Caines writing about Morphologies in the TLS blog
    'A worthy addition to the immense collection of criticism.'
    The Guardian
    'Works brilliantly... ingenious... unfailingly interesting.'
    The Independent, Book of the Week
    'Exquisite... delectable'
    New Scientist.
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