The Dedalus Occult Reader

' Lachman presents a generous anthology of literary texts inspired by the weird, the supernatural and the gothic. From Beckford's Vathek to Gustav Meyrink's The Golem, there is a successful balance of the well-known, the esoteric and the curious.' Stuart Kelly in Scotland on Sunday 'The first item, from William Beckford's Vathek, indicates the feverish imaginings gathered in this "occult reader". It encompasses drugs, sacrifice, a genii and an Indian who becomes irresistibly arousing by transforming himself into a ball. ETA Hoffman's The Golden Flower Pot shows how this writer's fertile imagination can animate even everyday objects, as in his best-known work, The Nutcracker. But the oddest example is the most recent. From 1999, Robert Irwin's explicit account of cult sexual initiation somehow involves "The Gambols" cartoon strip from the Daily Express.' Chris Hirst in The Independent 'Lachman has found in these stories such a strong linking thread that not only will you marvel that precisely the same interest in the world of hidden forms...has animated so many authors, you may even begin to think there's something in it...There is a time and a place for these stories: it is now.' Nick Lezard's Choice in The Guardian for paperback of the week '...fascinatingly offbeat stuff from Balzac, H. G. Wells, the endearingly sloppy Robert Irwin, Huysmans, and the enchantingly lurid Pole Jan Potocki.' Chris Power in The Times