num_pages: 341
description: Cross Henry James with M.R. James and you might end up with a writer like Robert Aickman though his self-described strange stories remain confoundingly and uniquely his own. Aickmans superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange of the void behind the face of order is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress and then anotherand then another? Do a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover this collection offers a generous introduction to a sophisticated psychologically acute modernist whose achievements have too long been hidden under the cloak of genre.
language: English
title: Compulsory Games
publisher: NYRB Classics