"The Book" is an unfinished short story by American
horror fiction
Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian ...
writer
H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in late 1933. It was first published in the journal ''Leaves'' in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.
In the story fragment, the narrator is given an ancient book by a strange bookseller, and when he takes it home and examines it, weird and sinister events ensue.
In October 1933, Lovecraft wrote in a letter:
The ''H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'' suggests that "The Book" was one of the undestroyed experiments—an attempt to translate Lovecraft's poem sequence ''
Fungi from Yuggoth
''Fungi from Yuggoth'' is a sequence of 36 sonnets by cosmic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Most of the sonnets were written between 27 December 1929 – 4 January 1930; thereafter individual sonnets appeared in ''Weird Tales'' and other genre ...
'' into prose. (The completed fragment corresponds to the first three
sonnets
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...
, which form more of a coherent narrative than the rest of the sequence.)
[
"The Black Tome of Alsophocus", first published in '' New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos'' (1969), is an attempt by Martin S. Warnes to complete "The Book". Warnes turns the fragment into a tale of possession by Nyarlathotep.][H. P. Lovecraft and Martin S. Warnes, "The Black Tome of Alsophocus", ''New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos''.]
In 2019, the latter Warnes completion was adapted into
short film of the same name
The aforementioned film was featured in 2020 Edition of th
H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon
and it its included in the Festival'
Best of 2020 Short Film Collection bluray
References
External links
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Short stories by H. P. Lovecraft
1938 short stories
Horror short stories
Works originally published in American magazines
Short stories published posthumously
Unfinished literature
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