Book Review: The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Vol. 1 Edited by James D. Jenkins & Ryan Cagle
As has been mentioned in reviews on this blog before, there is a lot of literature from around the world published every year that English-only folks never get to read because it’s in other languages and there is only so much translation going on. This can create a false impression that other countries don’t have their own tradition of say, horror stories. This volume is meant to bring some of those horror stories to English-only readers from around the world, concentrating on stories that have not been professionally published in English before that the publishers were able to get translated affordably.
The twenty-one stories begin with “Uironda” by Luigi Musolino, an Italian tale about a trucker who hears about a possibly mythical destination that only the doomed can find. And sure enough, the turnoff to Uironda appears, but what he finds there may be only what he carries with him in the first place.
The final story is “Snapshots” by Jose Maria Latorre, a Spanish tale about a photo booth where the photographs don’t show the person sitting inside. Or do they?
Spain is perhaps over represented, with three stories plus one from Catalonia which is geographically inside Spain but linguistically distinctive.
Most of the stories are recent, with 2020’s “Señor Ligotti” by Bernardo Esquina of Mexico appearing in this collection first, before the official Mexican release. (It’s about an author who makes a bad deal to get a good apartment.) But there are a couple of older tales, with the eldest being 1971’s “The White Cormorant” by Frithjof Spalder of Norway. (A sailor decides to navigate a particularly dangerous route.)
I especially liked a couple of the stories that are based on local folklore. “Down, In Their World” by Flavius Ardelean has starving Romanians go into an abandoned mine to scavenge the old rails for metal to sell, but they’re not the only ones who are starving. “The House of Leuk Dawour” by Bathie Ngoye Thiam takes place in Senegal as a young woman defends herself against an evil spirit. She survives, but at what cost?
My least favorite story was “Donation” by Lars Ahn of Denmark. An engaged couple lets in a little boy who’s collecting, but it’s not quite clear what it is he’s collecting for. I found it tedious rather than suspenseful and wound up skimming.
Content note: body horror, harm to children, suicide, rape.
Overall: An interesting collection that shows there’s much to be found if you go looking–there is now a second volume as well. Recommended to horror fans who’d like to branch out a bit…and if you read more than one language, you might find a new favorite author!
