Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
by Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (published in 1986), and his second, Grimscribe (published in 1991), permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.
Ligotti’s stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below.
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Paperback Edition
464 pages. Printed card cover.
ISBN: 9780143107767
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“The best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction.”
Washington Post
“Nothing more or less than the king of weird fiction.”
Jeff VanderMeer, author, editor, and literary critic
“Thomas Ligotti has had one of the most quietly extraordinary careers in the history of horror fiction. He is a dense, witty, and enormously inventive writer.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“He belongs to the most honourable tradition in the field, that of subtlety and awesomeness rather than the relentlessly graphic.”
Ramsey Campbell, horror fiction author, editor, and literary critic
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About the Author
Thomas Ligotti is an American horror author, lay philosopher, and writer. His writings are rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have been described by critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of gothic fiction.
