paperback, 176 pages
Published Feb. 6, 2018 by Vintage.
An award-winning debut story collection by Karin Tidbeck, author of Amatka and heir to Borges, Le Guin, and Lovecraft.
A child is born in a tin can. A switchboard operator finds himself in hell. Three corpulent women float somewhere beyond time. Welcome to the weird world of Karin Tidbeck, the visionary Swedish author of literary sci-fi, speculative fiction, and mind-bending fantasy who has captivated readers around the world. Originally published by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg--the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer--Jagannath has been celebrated by readers and critics alike, with rave reviews from major outlets and support from lauded peers like China Mieville and even Ursula K. Le Guin herself. These are stories in which fairies haunt quiet towns, and an immortal being discovers the nature of time--stories in which anything is possible.
In Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck introduces us to a strange world full of strange and surreal occurrences in 13 stories, stories that always surprise and never bore us with their varied narrative technique. She is on the trail to another side of the world that only appears when you as a reader change your point of view. A highly recommended book whose stories are told with great skill.
i LOVED this. i will be trying to untangle many of these short stories for a very long time.
I really enjoyed a couple of the first stories - Beatrice and Rebecca - so I was feeling pretty good! But then I didn’t really care about the rest of them. A lot of folks mention the titular story Jagannath as a strong one, but I didn’t care for it much either.
Oddly, I really enjoyed Afterword. Tidbeck talks about translating her own stories and has some interesting thoughts about the different ways words sound and how that changes the tone. I think she did an excellent job with the translation. There wasn’t anything that read awkwardly to me.
Such a strange book. I needed to take a minute after each story to let it properly sink in. I liked some better than others, which is inevitable, but really like the feeling of the book overall. And the folklore and cultural references were very new to me so I appreciated them a lot!
A bit fae/folk, a bit Borges or Lovecraft or... surprisingly cohesive for being a bit uncategorizable.
Tremendously imaginative speculative shorts. There might be a bit too much viscera involved to say it's perfectly delivered, but the way she makes the delivery of some of these details so natural (and manageable to my delicate nature!) tempts me to claim that it is. Jagannath is one of the best books I've read this year.
