In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land [Hardcover]

Thomas Ligotti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1997

This is scarce Ligotti title that was out of print upon publication. Cream buckram-covered boards with front and rear cover illustrations. Contents are four short stories in the fantastical horror vein of Lovecraft: "His shadow shall rise to a higher house", "The bells will sound forever", "A soft voice whispers nothing", and "When you hear the singing, you will know it is time". The book is accompanied by a CD of music by Stephen Stapleton of Current 93, which is the suggested appropriate aural ambience for reading the stories.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 60 pages
• Publisher: Durtro, London; 1ST edition (1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0952349728
• ISBN-13: 978-0952349723
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,967,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, creeping soundtrack to lyrical tales of madness, May 31, 2006

By 

yorgos dalman "yorgos dalman" (Holland, Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land (Hardcover)

Thomas Ligotti, unknown by the mass, loved and cherrished by a happy few admirers of his tales of weird fiction, `haute culture' horror and dark wonders, is one of the most intruiging and most pervers stylists around today.
His debut, the collection of short stories "Songs of a dead dreamer", wasn't just a big promise, it hit the bull's eye on the spot. It was and still is no less then a blow with a sledge hammer to the face of the literary establishment.
His kaleidoscopic style of writing, his lyrical and bizarre choise of words, his tzunami of haunting imagery and Lynchian mise-en-scene, is unparralelled in the genre, and maybe outside of it too.

Ligotti's craft is mystery as well. You can't grab it or disect it, you can't really get a hold of it, it wanders around in the dark and on the most unexpecting moments it reaches out and touches you where no literary wit has ever touched you before.
"The Nightmare factory" combines three of Ligotti's early collections as well as new stories. It's a good place to start when you're not familiar with him. If you are, then you know that his new collection "Teatro Grottesco" is waiting around the corner to surface from the mud.

David Tibet, frontman of the British post-industrial act Current 93, is among Ligotti's biggest fans. And he menaged to persuade the master to co-operate with some experimental audio projects, resulting in "I have a special plan for this world", the very limited "This degenerate little town" and a spoken epologue on "All the pretty little horses".

But for tonight there is the first piece of psychological audio terror, "In a foreign town, in a foreign land". Ligotti wrote four original stories for this project about a nameless town "near the northern border" in which a lot of things happen, or seem to happen, or, for that matter, apparently do not happen. Because Ligotti is at his best in suggesting all kinds of threats, all kinds of menacing atmospheres, with out revealing too much.
So what are the cold, naked facts? What is really known by the narrator(s) of the stories, and what is just a hallucination, a mere thought in a moment of insaniy? And what is known, at the end, by the reader?
There are streets, seemingly abandoned, there is whispering in far corridors and beneath wooden floors, and somewhere there is a head on a stick in the hands of a woman. And all this in Ligotti's typical prose that is bright and sparkling as the stars in the black cold nightsky, but at the same time deluding and awkwardly blessed with a dimmed glow of deceitfulness.

The horror presented here is created mostly in the mind of the reader, as it is done by the best literature and films; not much physical harm is done, and what is done, is not very clear.
And after the last page is turned, we are left with a sense that something, not sure what, is changed for good, both in "that unnamed town near the northern border" and, possibly, in ourselves.

So, and Current 93 provides the soundtrack to these dark tales, creating brooding, flowing pieces of dark ambient, littered with softly spoken lines from Ligotti's stories. Minimal, dense, swirling audio mist. Mesmerising, haunting and creepy as the darkest corners in your own bedroom on a chilly moonless night.

So put the needle to the record, close the curtains, hold your cat tightly in your arms, blow out the candles. Meanwhile don't forget that it's all in your mind. And remember: "When you hear the singing, you will know it's time..."