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By Haralambi Markov
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By Mike Allen, C. S. E. Cooney,
Edited by Mike Allen
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The Language of Knives
Stories by Haralambi Markov
Introduction by Ann VanderMeer
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“Markov’s collection is stylish, macabre, and startling as a cigarette burn. The Language of Knives ranges across the landscape of death, a late-night conversation between grief and memory. A haunting debut.”
—Angela “A.G.” Slatter, award-winning author of The Cold House
“Haunted and horny, melancholy and mysterious, Haralambi Markov’s The Language of Knives is occasionally like being flayed on the inside of your eyelids, but in a good way. So weird. So queer. So nauseating. And so, so beautiful.”
—C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
Cover art and design by Diana Naneva
A murderous nine-headed monster from legend permits a podcast interview. The mall has opened its doors, and nothing, not even certain death, will keep the shoppers away. A dead man’s curse drives his descendants to drown themselves, no matter how far from home they flee. An eerie haunted house attraction receives an even more unnerving guest. A grieving widower, knife in hand, undertakes a painstaking, gruesome ritual to appease the gods. If seeking a boon from Baba Yaga sounds nerve-shattering, imagine having to live under her roof.
These thirteen tales from Bulgarian author Haralambi Markov meld Slavic mythology, pitch-black humor, and moving explorations of queer identity with vistas rooted in body horror and nightmares, yielding results that are sometimes deeply disquieting, sometimes surprisingly hopeful, and always strikingly novel. As Hugo and World Fantasy award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer states in her introduction, Markov “writes with such power and intensity that you can’t imagine where they get the courage to put such words on paper. Their work challenges us to face our fears, our insecurities, and not look away.”
Praise for The Language of Knives
“Markov’s precise prose paints a viscerally beautiful horror journey in this stunning collection.”
—Chelsea Conradt, USA Today Bestselling author of The Farmhouse
“These haunting tales feel both ancient and utterly new. Bleak and beautiful, visceral and transcendent, Markov weaves folklore into a cosmos that whispers under your skin and in to your bones. A stunning collection of lush nightmares.”
—Michael Harris Cohen, author of Effects Vary
“Monsters abound, pain and pleasure intertwine, and bodies bloom in ever-surprising transformations in Haralambi Markov’s fiction. A must-read for fans of Clive Barker, queer Weird lovers, and anyone with a taste for beautiful, creeping dread.”
—Nino Cipri, author of Dead Girls Don’t Dream
“Evocative, haunting, masterful. Markov’s collection will reverberate in your marrow long after the last turned page.”
—Natania Barron, author of The Queens of Fate series
“The Language of Knives is a brilliant debut collection, disturbing in all the best ways. Markov draws on Bulgarian folklore to flavor these tales which range from magical realism, horror, dark fantasy and science fiction. Markov is a protean talent, their style changing from story to story, even challenging traditional story forms. Dazzling and dark, The Language of Knives treads the line between beauty and terror.”
—Craig Laurance Gidney, author of A Spectral Hue
“In the razor-sharp collection The Language of Knives, Haralambi Markov cuts to the bone in a visceral examination of generational trauma and the oppressive legacy of family curses. With surgical precision, he slices through the weight of silence trapped in ancestral memory, exposing childhood abuse and confronting hereditary horrors. Released from their bonds, these brutal, blood-soaked stories raise their voices in a chorus of terror and loss in forests filled with vengeful beasts, the resurrected echoes soaring past the borderlands to breach the safety of even the tallest of towers. These terrifying tales speak truth in the language of hunger; the language of dirt, roots and seeds; the language of meat and bone; the language of knives. A haunting and harrowing debut by a rising star in horror.”
—Carina Bissett, editor of Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas and author of Dead Girl, Driving & Other Devastations, a Shirley Jackson award nominee
“The Language of Knives is an impressive debut collection from one of the most compelling voices of modern horror fiction. Haralambi Markov investigates the body and the self, unflinching from what makes these fragile cages beautiful, and what can transform them. Nature, technology, the fantastic, the cursed, and the divine all impact the bodies in these stories, but it is humanity that truly transforms people: lust, rage, sorrow, and love push the self beyond the mortal and into the truly uncanny. Do not come to these stories expecting comfort, no. Come to these stories ready to be changed.”
—Martin Cahill, author of USA Today Bestseller Audition For The Fox
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Ann VanderMeer
Nine Tongues Tell of
The Town the Forest Ate
When Raspberries Bloom in August
The Mall on the Hill by the Horizon
Convalescence
The Drowning Line
Swallow
Holding Hands with Monsters
The Midnight Feast
The Language of Knives
Bones Are Stones for Building
Spring Is Violence, Spring Seeks Blood
Baba Yaga Helps Build a House
