Jagannath - Karin Tidbeck

Jagannath
by Karin Tidbeck



Publisher: Cheeky Frawg Books
Year: 2012
Format: epub
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories

About the book

“I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck’s imagination is recognizably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable–quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“Restrained and vivid, poised and strange, Tidbeck, with her impossible harmonies, is a vital voice.” – China Mieville

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical short stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in the book widely praised by Ursula K. Le Guin, China Mieville, and Karen Joy Fowler. Introduction by Elizabeth Hand, afterword by the author. (Print version available in November.)

“Tidbeck has a gift for the uncanny and the unsettling. In these wonderful, subtle stories, magic arrives quietly. It comes from the forests or the earth or was always there in your own family or maybe exists in another realm entirely…leaving you slightly dazed and more than a little enchanted.” – Karen Joy Fowler

“Were this collection to contain only its biomechanoid wonder of a title story, it would still be amazing. Jagannath heralds the arrival of a bold and brilliant new voice, which I see too few of these days. You must read Karin Tidbeck.” – Caitlin R. Kiernan

“In Karin Tidbeck’s collection Jagannath, the mundane becomes strange and the strange familiar with near-Hitchcockian subtlety. I loved Tidbeck’s clean, classic prose. It creates beautifully eerie music for a twilight domain.” – Karen Lord

“I can’t think of when I last read a collection that blew me away the way that Jagannath has, or one that’s left me somewhat at a loss to describe just how strange and beautiful and haunting these tales are.” – Elizabeth Hand (from her introduction)

About the author

She lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. She has published prose and poetry in Swedish since 2002, with publications in journals like Jules Verne-magasinet and Lyrikvännen. Her English publication history includes Weird Tales, Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine and the anthologies Steampunk Revolution and The Time-Travelers Almanac. Her 2012 short story collection Jagannath won the Crawford Memorial Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Tiptree Award and World Fantasy Award. One of the stories, “Augusta Prima”, won the SF & Fantasy Translation Award.

When not writing, she does freelance work as a creative writing teacher, manuscript coach and translator (and can be hired, too, although mostly in Swedish). And when not doing that, she geeks out on things like forteana, surrealism, games (from board- to video- to roleplaying- to LARP), subversive cross-stitching and folklore.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Elizabeth Hand
Beatrice
Some Letters for Ove Lindström
Miss Nyberg and I
Rebecka
Herr Cederberg
Who is Arvid Pekon?
Brita’s Holiday Village
Reindeer Mountain
Cloudberry Jam
Pyret
Augusta Prima
Aunts
Jagannath
Author’s Afterword: Transposing Worlds