Tartarus Press

publishers

The Sound of His Horn and Other Stories

by

Sarban

 

The Sound of His Horn is a classic novel of the uncanny. Alan Querdillion escapes a prisoner of war camp only to find himself in an alternative future in which the Nazis have won the Second World War. Against a sylvan backdrop the legend of the Wild Huntsman is revived and genetic experiments have created strange hybrids. Humans are hunted for game, haunted by the sound of the Huntsman's horn.

 

In addition to The Sound of His Horn, this new edition adds the stories previously collected in The Sacrifice and Other Stories: The Sacrifice/ The Sea-Things/ Number Fourteen/ The King of the Lake.

 

The books of Sarban, and specifically The Sound of His Horn, are the subject of in-depth analysis at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

 

Also by by Sarban

Ringstones

The Doll Maker

 

See also Time, A Falconer, a biography of Sarban by Mark Valentine

 

 

Reviews for The Sound of His Horn

‘Some many call it black poetry; some off-beat science-fiction; some a plain marrow-chiller... Of course, readers who go only for ‘naturalistic’ novels should stay away—but devotees of Poe and Tennessee Williams should welcome the pseudonymous English novelist Sarban... His book is a stunning tour de force, a horror-thriller with depth.’ The New York Times Book Review

‘This strange combination of daydream and nightmare.’ Kingsley Amis

‘I frankly confess myself scared. Who “Sarban” is, I do not know; but I should not wish to take his imagination to bed with me. [It] would be indescribable, if only the author did not describe it with such conviction.’ The Observer

‘Sarban is one of the old weird authentics. No outline of mine can possibly convey the skill with which old man Sarban maintains suspense and builds up imagined fears upon unimagined horrors.’ Daily Express

‘Sarban has an imagination as grandiloquent, as exfoliatory as that of Beckford, the author of Vathek... Here is no straightforward piece of make-believe. It is terrifying, horrible, something that runs athwart the processes of human nature and fills the reader with a dreadful wonder.’ John O’ London’s Weekly

 

Reviews for The Sacrifice and Other Stories

Reviews:

"To find four splendid weird tales among a deceased writer's unpublished effects is a considerable bonus. . . . I am not alone in thanking Tartarus Press and Jocelyn Leighton of giving us, at last, the complete strange stories of Sarban. As always, the production of The Sacrifice and Other Stories is generally excellent, and the book as a physical object is a pleasure to handle." Roger Johnson, All Hallows, October 2002.

"All in all, consider Sacrifice a must-have for Sarban collectors and aficionados of atmospheric supernatural tales." Jack Lloyd, Cemetery Dance, 2003

"Each of the rare, dark treasures offered in The Sacrifice and Other Stories suggest the aesthetic power of subtlety. There is little if any blood shed in Sarban's mythologically informed stories of despairing beauty . . . Found in the unpublished effects of the deceased author, The Sacrifice and Other Stories provides an invaluable footnote to the career of one of dark fantasy's most superb, somewhat neglected craftsmen." Gauntlet