num_pages: 226
description: Sewn hardback printed on 130gsm acid-free paper, and bound by Bath Press in burgundy wibalin cloth stamped in silver, with head and tailbands. 300 copies. (Out of print).Contents: 'Foreword''The Mermaid''Far-Off Things''Cousin X''A Lake''The Two-Timer''The Tattooist''Ageless''Autumn Colours'.In these eight immaculately realised strange stories, Quentin S. Crisp delves deep into the decadence of contemporary life. The fresh originality of the tales and their settings: an English country garden in ‘Cousin X’; contemporary Japan in ‘A Lake’: is matched by the elegance of the writing. They are unified, perhaps, by a yearning for the achingly perfect, ecstatic moment. As Mark Samuels points out in his Foreword, Crisp’s fiction is ‘. . . too multi-layered, too individual, to be labelled. One can spot influences here and there, a dash of this and a sprinkling of that, but the end result is much greater than the sum of its parts.’
language: English
title: Morbid Tales
publisher: Tartarus Press