Book, Horror Tales from the 19th Century[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. As soon as night falls and the daytime contours of things and people begin to blur, the walls that we all build against the unknown also begin to give way. It is the time of furtive shadows, of suspicious noises, when all it takes is a moment of carelessness for our apprehensions and nightmares to threaten to gain a palpable presence. This is the domain of the horror story, which flirts with this gray and uncertain area of ​​our lives and transforms it into literature. In this anthology of Horror Stories from the 19th century, writer Alberto Manguel brought together, especially for the Brazilian public, the fine flower of fear. As old as civilization, the horror story defines its rules and reaches its peak in Anglo-Saxon literature, in the lineage of writers that goes from the "gothic" Ann Radcliffe to Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. But Manguel is not content with just the best-known masters of the genre, such as Henry James, Guy de Maupassant or Robert Louis Stevenson. It invites writers of all stature and various languages, from the Portuguese of Eça de Queiroz to the Yiddish of Lamed Schapiro. Along the way, the reader passes through all the environments and stumbles upon all the motifs of the horror tale: ruined churches, putrid undergrounds, deserted gardens, prisons and battlefields, invisible creatures, the undead, frightening animals and enchanted mirrors. All this in your favorite armchair, in (relative) safety, enjoying the last charm of this book: new translations of all the narratives, each one written by an expressive name in contemporary Brazilian culture.