Seeking spooky short stories in translation
December 13, 2019 5:13 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for spooky (ghosts, creepy things, monsters, witches, supernatural - not serial killers or 'real' horror) short stories or novellas that have been translated into English.
Failing that: will take reccs for any authors from outside the UK and USA.
Bonus points if they're easily available through any UK retailer that is not Amazon....
in return, here's my recommendation: Julian Rios, Revelation on the Boulevard of Crime. Available in English in Best European Fiction 2010 from Dalkey Archive Press (copies around the place on second hand websites).
in return, here's my recommendation: Julian Rios, Revelation on the Boulevard of Crime. Available in English in Best European Fiction 2010 from Dalkey Archive Press (copies around the place on second hand websites).
Lafcadio Hearn wrote extensively about Japanese folk/ghost/strange tales. His best known book was Kwaidan, Stories and Studies of Strange Things. A film was made from four of the tales, Kwaidan, in 1965, directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
posted by twentyfeetof tacos at 5:53 AM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by twentyfeetof tacos at 5:53 AM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Here's an FPP that's on point: (Translated) Weird Tales from the 19th Century. In the follow-up FPP, Weird Tales from the 20th Century, only Yumiko Kurahashi's work is really 'traditional' ghosts, creepy things, etc., but Gippius, Ocampo, Asghar, Rodoreda, Krohn, and Ogawa all have translated 'strange' stories, along with a bunch of Surrealists.
I'm also aware of French weird fiction from Black Coat Press (though it's mostly SF/F and a little pulpy) and the web site Diseased Gardens, which has a bibliography of strange fiction in translation. Searches at /r/horrorlit and /r/WeirdLit seem to work well too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:01 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm also aware of French weird fiction from Black Coat Press (though it's mostly SF/F and a little pulpy) and the web site Diseased Gardens, which has a bibliography of strange fiction in translation. Searches at /r/horrorlit and /r/WeirdLit seem to work well too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:01 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh, in an 18th C. weird tales FPP, I also linked a neat story by Pu Songling--the whole collection is a classic--plus an influential but sort of odd ghost story by Johann Karl August Musäus.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:08 AM on December 13, 2019
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:08 AM on December 13, 2019
Several of the tales in the Argentine author Samanta Schweblin's Mouthful of Birds, such as the titular one, are eerily weird, albeit not conventional supernatural horror. Some of them can be found on-line.
There's a story called "Then a Door Opens and Swings Shut" by the Austrian author Alois Hotschnig, in the collection Maybe This Time that I found very creepy.
It's been a while since I read The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski (translated from the Polish), but I recall being spooked by the best of its stories.
posted by misteraitch at 6:27 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
There's a story called "Then a Door Opens and Swings Shut" by the Austrian author Alois Hotschnig, in the collection Maybe This Time that I found very creepy.
It's been a while since I read The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski (translated from the Polish), but I recall being spooked by the best of its stories.
posted by misteraitch at 6:27 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
E.T.A. Hoffmann's stuff is all in the public domain.
posted by BibiRose at 8:16 AM on December 13, 2019
posted by BibiRose at 8:16 AM on December 13, 2019
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer has a translated book in the Gutenberg project website. For a taste, try El Monte de las Ánimas / The Spirits' Mountain.
posted by sukeban at 12:40 PM on December 13, 2019
posted by sukeban at 12:40 PM on December 13, 2019
(* I think I should give a content warning of antisemitism in one of the tales of the Bécquer book, which is what happens when a 19th century Catholic Spaniard tries to write medieval-y gothic lit)
Anyway, last year they published an unfinished book by Alexandre Dumas (of the Three Musketeers), The Thousand and One Ghosts. As it is, it is a collection of short gothic stories united by a framing device.
posted by sukeban at 12:52 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Anyway, last year they published an unfinished book by Alexandre Dumas (of the Three Musketeers), The Thousand and One Ghosts. As it is, it is a collection of short gothic stories united by a framing device.
posted by sukeban at 12:52 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't know if it's readily available in print in English, but you can hear John Darnielle read one of Amparo Davila's creeeeeepy shorts here.
posted by praemunire at 1:25 PM on December 13, 2019
posted by praemunire at 1:25 PM on December 13, 2019
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Can be found in his translated Collected Short Stories and available on Waterstones' website. If I remember correctly - I may not, it's been ages since I read this - Ray did the translating himself.
posted by sockandawe at 5:20 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]