Ex Occidente Press

	Passport Levant - July 2010 Passport Levant is an Ex Occidente Press imprint specializing in limited deluxe landscape format volumes. Nothing can explain the end - and generally also the beginning - of a love affair. Passport Levant exists because of the love we carry within for whatever remains of the old European world and its culture. In other words, a staunch, fortunate and fertile love for ruins, and for the lost empires of the soul. The Europe of the Passport Levant is a different kind of Europe, its wayward borders including as far lands as the steppes of Russia, the shores of Bosphorus and the tinker like suns of Damascus. With the kind help of such characters as Ottoman gentlemen, the Peacock sultans, the ancient fortune tellers in the Phanar, the guardian order of the Carpathian gypsies, the Jewish tailors of the Danube towns, the Imperial mariners of Trieste and many others, who shall remain unnamed for now, Passport Levant aims to be a way to the secret heart of Europe, to its tragedies, its mysteries and its marvels. More...
	The Summer of Kismet - August 2010 Between 14th and 20th August, Ex Occidente Press / Passport Levant will be unreachable. Before departure, a few hints of the wonderful things to come. A mysterious photograph of two new books, in their advanced prototype phase. I am not going to say which volumes, though. Secondly, two words - Corto Maltese. If you are unfamiliar with this fine Andalusian gentleman, let me just say that I consider him one of the paters spiritualis of the press. A Passport Levant novella featuring the much elusive and highly aesthetical sea captain is in work. A novella by whom? By a very fine author. An important literary event, as you will soon agree. Everything is Kismet, as Corto would say. With this in mind and with the belief that being more polite than one feels like, or more polite than what is actually needed is an attitude worth cultivating, I've decided to start a section of what is usually called "testimonials" [updated 20th August, 2010]. The page will be updated frequently. See you in September with The Sons of Ishmael, An Emporium of Automata, The 'Star' Ushak and two volumes made in Levant. Gxis revido!
	The Joys of Iron Machines - July 2010 The first half of July brings with it a certain gloominess and three new volumes. The zinc, the bronze and the gold folio machines have been busy lately. The Mascarons of the Late Empire by Mark Valentine, The Wounds of Exile by Reggie Oliver and Tenebrous Tales by Christopher Barker will all be in-stock and shipping by 14th July, MMX. A gentle note of caution: very low stock for The Mascarons of the Late Empire and The Wounds of Exile.
	The Defeat of Grief (Passport Levant) - August 2010 John Howard Romania, 1940: a country in social and political turmoil, about to suffer catastrophic territorial losses as war engulfs Europe and its neighbours take the opportunity to settle old scores. People seem to be listless, apprehensive, or defiantly bellicose as they face an unknowable future; for many, there does not appear to be any path forward not involving further upheaval and change, culminating in an epoch of unprecedented terror and destruction. As tension mounts, the controversial academic Dr Adrian Lereanu makes the journey to the Black Sea resort of Balcic at the behest of an influential friend. Lereanu’s visit to Balcic is not intended as a holiday, although it is clear to him that going there is for his own good. More...
	The Ten Dictates of Alfred Tesseller (Passport Levant) - August 2010 D.P. Watt You remember Alfred Tesseller—the quiet one who arrived, all those years ago, in our decrepit country classroom. He had that accent that was so strange and yet so enchanting. We thought his family were ancient gypsies and the tales we told about him rivalled any myth performed around immortal fires. You must remember him! Surely you remember the dark breads, strange meats and exotic fruits he would bring with him in his battered metal lunchbox, and how, once, and only once, he shared the small squares of cake—of spicy syrup, or honey, and ground nuts—his mother would make him. You recall how we gathered around him that day, like we were old friends, and how he laughed, and we did too (although we laughed like dogs at the hiding we would deliver him that evening in the back lane). More...
	Oblivion's Poppy (Passport Levant) - August 2010 Colin Insole It is 1952. At the Retreat in Wilflingen, bequeathed centuries ago by the Von Stauffenberg Knights, the residents, drawn inevitably and mysteriously to its shelter, hold their secrets and shame. Amongst them is the Englishman who plundered and beggared a family during the Austrian inflation: the German, whose loss of courage caused the 1944 July plot to fail and the student who betrayed the White Rose Movement. But their comfortable residence in the spacious grounds, filled with the study of its flora and fauna, is not unconditional. Their work, in the Cave of Faces, the suffocating rose-garden or the vast archives of the dead, force them to recall and relive their actions. And guests have been invited - the lost and dispossessed of Europe - each brought by a fragment from their past, to tell their stories and confront their betrayers. More...
	The Satyr (Passport Levant) - August 2010 Stephen J. Clark 1941, in the final throes of the Blitz, Austin Osman Spare becomes the only salvation for a traumatised artist who calls herself Marlene Dietrich, a fugitive from the ominous Institute for Gifted and Orphaned Exiles. Wandering the shattered streets of Southwark Marlene encounters a mysterious gentleman, Paddy Hughes. Consulting her portfolio of drawings as a talisman and aided by spirit lamps, they set out together across the ruined Borough in search of her lost mentor, a man called The Satyr. As Hughes falls under Marlene’s spell he is initiated into the secret mythology of her birth from The Danube of her imagination. Unwittingly he becomes her protector while Ms Charnock, a wayward sister of the institute, pursues them, only to be drawn into her patient’s infernal odyssey. Refracted through the perspectives of the swindler Paddy Hughes, Ms Charnock’s reports and Marlene’s journals and drawings, the drama builds momentum towards a cataclysm foretold. Interspersed with Marlene’s art, drawn by the author, The Satyr is a tale inspired by the life and occult oeuvre of Austin Osman Spare. More...
	The Mascarons of the Late Empire (Passport Levant) - July 2010 Mark Valentine Only a few copies remaining. In the afterglow of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, in a city at its furthest edge, a young scholar hopes to finish his study of the mascarons, the stone masks, carved on its grand buildings. His tired eyes seem to see features from his sketches in the faces of some of the passers-by in this liminal place. In a story of transition and loss, we share in the strange visions and new tensions of a forgotten era. When an artistic Englishman receives an invitation to a private view at an atelier he does not know, on a card marked with a stark symbol, he decides he will investigate. What he finds introduces him to an art he had never imagined, and the experience of a lifetime. This enigmatic story is likely to resonate in the reader’s mind. And in a walled garden on the Bosphorus, a League of Nations official meets a Frenchman who devotes his time to studies of all the sects of the old Ottoman Empire. More...
	The Wounds of Exile (Passport Levant) - July 2010 Reggie Oliver Sold Out. The poet Kipling once wrote of East and West that “never the twain shall meet”, but they do meet, and the subsequent collision has been the occasion of both misery and splendour throughout history. In Reggie Oliver’s novella The Wounds of Exile, it is 1576 and the Ottoman Empire is at its zenith, teetering on the edge of corruption and decline. We meet it through the eyes of the scholar Martin Bellorius as he accompanies his pupil, Prince Vladimir of Vallachia to the heart of the Empire in Istanbul. Vladimir has been taken as a hostage by the Sultan’s all conquering general Sokolly. What Bellorius, Vladimir and his dwarf servant see there, how they escape and the price they pay for both their captivity and release is the theme of this novella. More...
	The Silver Voices - May 2010 John Howard Transylvania: the country beyond the forest and land of the seven fortress towns. In The Silver Voices we encounter the previously unknown eighth town: Sternbergstadt. Now known as Steaua de Munte, it’s one of those places where past and present continually meet, with no-one being entirely sure which has the upper hand. In Steaua de Munte history can never be said to be dead and buried; it plays too many tricks on the present and future for that . . . John Howard's stellar debut collection eludes all sorts of categorizations. Here you will find the ghostly without the ghosts, the supernatural without that old rust, the traveller and the Exile, the deaths and the lives of foreign countries and the numinous in all its secret, hidden splendor. A bit like Herta Müller doing a Walter de la Mare impersonation, with H.G. Wells, Robert Aickman, Olivia Manning and Julien Gracq standing by, waiting silently for the inhuman - or maybe all too human - whispers of silver voices. More...
	An Emporium of Automata - June 2010 D.P. Watt An Emporium of Automata draws together stories spanning a decade of writing. From the incredible clockwork mechanisms of ‘Erbach’s Emporium of Automata’ to the disturbing images on a grainy reel of film in ‘Dr Dapertutto’s Saturnalia’, section I: Phantasmagorical Instruments unearths the magical transformations of matter and the desperation of memory. The determinations of the book enthusiast are revealed in ‘Of Those Who Follow Emile Bilonche’. The cunning rituals of an ancient tradition offer a destitute woman otherworldly hope in ‘They Dwell in Ystumtuen’. And ‘The Butcher’s Daughter’ continues the family business in a fashion most unwelcome to the new tenants of her old home. The pomposity of a fading traditionalist is mirrored in the fate of a left-wing radical in ‘Room 89’. ‘The Condition’ finds the destiny of culture to be somewhat other than one might expect. More...
	The Black Cupboard - May 2010 Claude Seignolle Le Bahut Noir (The Black Cupboard) (1958) is an urban story which has the old streets and alleys of Paris as background. It is mainly a tale of Man’s fight against his fate and of his powerlessness to overthrow it; but it is also a Faustian story, with a powerful erotic drive. Since Seignolle’s writing so often deals with the lives of the people he met during his long wanderings in the French countryside, the particular concern with the carnal pleasures cannot be thought of as alien to his body of work; folklore, after all, is full of love potions and other means of securing the favours of the desired ones. And it is especially worthy of notice that at a certain point in his career he has also authored Sexie, Éloge de la Nymphomanie (Sexie, Eulogy of Nymphomania) (1998), initially banned as pornographic, clearly marking his interest in describing the actions of men in all their aspects (in a similar vein of depiction of the most basic urges of mankind, he published in 1959 La Gueule (The Mouth), dealing with his souvenirs of World War II and his imprisonment by the Germans. More...
	The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories - May 2010 Mark Samuels Mark Samuels is one of the few modern masters of the weird tale. He has enjoyed effusive praise from the likes of Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell and T.E.D. Klein. In his latest collection of tales he demonstrates the sense of mystical awe mingled with horror coupled with an elegant prose style that has made his name a byword for fantastic fiction of the highest quality. Where nightmares become reality, where shadows are bright, where the future is already decayed and dying, here, within the pages of this volume, you will find a consummation devoutly to be wished. More...
	The Greek Calends are Now! - March 2010 The Greek Calends? Oh, certainly sooner than that. For all the curious Occidentals, we are pleased to present you a handful of exclusive previews of six of the nine books Ex Occidente Press will have the honor and sheer joy to publish in the next two months. The Man Who Collected Machen & Other Stories by Mark Samuels An Emporium of Automata by D.P. Watt The Sons of Ishmael by George Berguño The 'Star' Ushak by Louis Marvick Virtue in Danger by Reggie Oliver Click on each of the above titles for a PDF preview. More details about each book will follow soon.
	Gifts from the Orient - February 2010 The Gifts from the Orient pack contains: one copy of the The Rite of Trebizond and Other Tales by Mark Valentine and John Howard, one exemplar of each of the two postcards which came with the original edition of The Rite of Trebizond, one signed copy of Putting the Pieces in Place by R.B. Russell, one copy of Madder Mysteries by Reggie Oliver, one bookplate signed by Reggie Oliver, one signed copy of The Nightfarers by Mark Valentine (including both dust jackets), one photocopy of the original hand written plot page for the story The Rite of Trebizond (manuscript printed on yellow textured paper), one copy of Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink, or, instead of Cinnabar's Gnosis, one copy of The Master in Cafe Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov. Ex Occidente Press offers only one of these packs at 280 USD. Please send an email to exoccidente@gmail.com to place your order. At the request of the buyer, the package is shipped either registered or insured.
	The Master in Café Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov "The séance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!" Because where there is Art, there is no Devil. This is a homage to Mikhail Bulgakov, last Prince and Master of the White Twilight lineage. Dissident extraordinaire, wayward Dandy, fabulous anti-hero of the Great Soviets, Doctor, Mystic and tamer of the Deamons from the Highest Courts of Hell, genial novelist and loyal soldier of the White Army, Morphia addict, Reactionary and Visionary, Mikhail Bulgakov remains to this day a singular man and a remarkable figure in the entire history of Promethean Literature. More than a marvelous writer, as the cynics and the cloaca of the literary critics want us to believe, Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the few Eschatological forerunners of the much ill-fated XXth century. Sathanas Triumpathur! The Master in Café Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov is an over-sized sewn hardcover book of 500 pages with endpapers, a full-colour frontispiece and a dust-jacket. Deluxe cloth boards with folio. Edition limited to 250 copies. $60 inc. p&p to Europe and USA, $70 to the rest of the world. More...
	Tenebrous Tales Christopher Barker Tenebrous Tales is the debut collection of short stories Christopher Barker. Although his work has been compared favourably to Walter de la Mare, Robert Aickman and M.R. James, Barker has created an original voice for himself. The author has a healthy disregard for gratuitous horror although he firmly believes that the portrayal of violence is entirely valid provided that it is handled responsibly. He is equally dismissive of rationalised supernaturalism and pretentious posturing. An obsession with emotional trauma and psychological dysfunction – placed within a suitably eerie and horrific context – dominates the author’s work. Nor is he judgmental. There are few villains in Barker’s work. Most of the characters are flawed victims. Tenbrous Tales is a devastatingly powerful collection of weird horror stories by an author who plans to stop working in the genre to concentrate on writing mainstream novels. This Ex Occidente Press edition will almost certainly be the only opportunity to access Barker’s short stories in collected book form. More...
	Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink - October 2009 Only a few copies remaining. "It is called the Cinnabar Book because that red is the colour of the garments of those who have reached the highest stage of perfection and stayed behind on earth for the salvation of mankind. Just as we cannot comprehend the meaning of a book if we just hold it in our hand or turn the pages without reading, so we will not profit from the course of our destiny if we do not grasp its meaning. Events follow each other like the pages of a book that are turned by Death; all we know is that they appear and disappear, and that with the last one the book ends. We do not even know that it keeps being opened, again and again, until we finally learn to read. And as long as we cannot read, life is for us a worthless game in which joy and sorrow mingle." - Gustav Meyrink Cinnabar's Gnosis is the first Ex Occidente Press anthology in a series of homages dedicated to European lost masters and exquisite fantasts. Some of the upcoming anthologies will be dedicated to Dino Buzzati, M.P. Shiel, Bruno Schulz, Ernst Jünger, Baron Corvo, Leo Perutz, Emil Cioran. All the stories and novelettes in Cinnabar's Gnosis are exclusive works, written especially for this anthology. More...
	All God's Angels, Beware! - October 2009 Quentin S. Crisp The house of literary Romanticism has fallen into sad disrepair. Through its dusty passages are to be heard only the muffled, shivering voices of its ghosts, like the last lingering echoes of some forgotten passion in a lunatic asylum. It has been said that, in the grounds of this ruin, was a hothouse where Romanticism showed its last, grotesque bloom in the form of H. P. Lovecraft, since when the grey desolation of realism has swept over all in a fungoid blight. And yet, there remains a kind of life here, perhaps stranger still than previous blooms, in a weedy and overgrown flowerbed, under the name of Quentin S. Crisp. All God’s Angels, Beware!, the fourth collection of fiction from the contemporary British master of dementia, gathers together for the first time eleven examples of Crisp’s own unique species of decayed Romanticism. Crisp draws equally from East and West to create a vision of the macabre like nothing else in literature. Discover here fleurs du mal of hybrid decadence, whimsy, exoticism, gothickry, horror and beauty. More...
	The Nightfarers - July 2009 Mark Valentine Only a few copies remaining. To find the “light of lights”, you must first know the darkness of night, said the 17th century German mystic Angelus Silesius. It is a truth found by all the characters in Mark Valentine’s new full collection of stories since Masques & Citadels. Carden, the quester after lost languages, finds there are some things that cannot be named. The narrator in "The Seer of Trieste" finds the old city harbours an image that has pervaded the most advanced literature of our time, while the strange and tragic secrets of another liminal city are explored in "The Seven Treasures of Bucharest". The voyages of "The White Sea Company" seem to sail beyond any mortal shore, while the smouldering sunrise in "The Dawn at Tzern" brings different illuminations to a priest, a postmaster, a prophet and a soldier. The author of The Connoisseur stories and editor of Wormwood offers a book of wonder, where neither light nor shadow are ever all they seem. Two years in the making, The Nightfarers is not only the most eclectic and exquisite Mark Valentine collection to date but also his finest. We here at Ex Occidente Press trust this is one of the very few contemporary masterpieces of the weird and the fantastic. More...
	The Terrible Changes - June 2009 Joel Lane Joel Lane's short stories combine the supernatural with themes of human loss, passion, solitude and despair. The complexity of the urban landscape provides a background to stories in which nothing can be relied upon. Ghosts and visions are an inevitable part of a reality where facts are uncertain, loyalties are divided, and the unknown is always close at hand. In Lane's fiction, the weird is a symbolic language that expresses the chilling beauty, sadness and mystery of real life. From "The Brand" (written in 1983) to "Alouette" (written in 2008), these stories are selected from a quarter-century of writing. Twelve previously uncollected stories are reprinted from magazines and anthologies, bridging various strands of the weird fiction genre: urban horror tales, elegiac ghost stories, erotic reveries and psychological fugues. Two brief new tales offer different perspectives on the theme of mortality. More...
	Bloody Baudelaire - June 2009 R.B. Russell When young Lucian Miller visits the house of a friend it is everything he had long fantasized about; decay and grandeur, lofty rooms, dark red shadows and dust. The evening, however, is a disaster, and Lucian finds himself apparently alone with the sophisticated but troubled Miranda Honeyman. They shut all of the doors in an attempt to keep their problems out, but it soon becomes apparent that someone else may have access to the house. On the threshold of adulthood, in a heightening atmosphere of sexual uncertainty and violence, Lucian tries to make sense of what is happening around him. Bloody Baudelaire handles its themes deftly, with a rare insight into human character in extremis. An absolutely stunning new novella from an upcoming master of the fantastic! More...
	The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales - March 2009 Jean Ray Only a few copies remaining. Jean Ray was a prolific Belgian author whose pen left us a varied oeuvre, ranging from journalism to adventure stories for youngsters and including a large number of gems of the fantastic, not least the well-known novel Malpertuis, which was adapted to the cinema in 1971 by Harry Kümel. Despite De Kremer's well deserved prestige among French and Belgian audiences – although part of his texts were originally written in Flemish, the "Jean Ray" fantastic and supernatural were in French and have appeared largely during the Second World War: Le Grand Nocturne (1942), La Cité de l'Indicible Peur, Malpertuis, Les Cercles de L'Epouvante (all 1943), Les Derniers Contes de Canterbury (1944) and Le Livre des Fantômes (1947) – the work of Jean Ray is still far from well known by Anglo-Saxon audiences. A couple of published anthologies rapidly went out of stock, preventing new generations of readers from getting acquainted with it. More...
	Madder Mysteries - February 2009 Reggie Oliver Sold Out. This is Reggie Oliver’s fourth work in the field of “strange stories”. In his first three The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini (Haunted River 2003), The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (Haunted River 2005) and Masques of Satan (Ash Tree Press 2007) he explored the uncanny interactions between the physical and metaphysical worlds with a blend of deep seriousness, sharp wit and sardonic humour unique to this writer’s work. As a result they have been among the most acclaimed collections of supernatural stories of the 21st century, garnering numerous awards and nominations. In Madder Mysteries, Oliver travels even deeper into his own bizarre territory, hence the title. The book is illustrated throughout with Oliver’s fine, but very bizarre illustrations, making it a connoisseur's collector’s item as well as a splendidly provoking read. Truly a thing of strangeness and a joy forever. More...
	Putting the Pieces in Place - January 2009 R.B. Russell Sold Out. The five stories that make up R.B. Russell’s debut collection, Putting the Pieces in Place, demonstrate a subtle mastery of the macabre. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a pleasing respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction with a chilling contemporary European resonance. In the title story, an obsessive collector goes to great lengths to recreate a moment in time. An author who many years ago sent one of his characters out into the world, finds that she returns to him in "Eleanor". In "There is Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do", a young woman finds that a boyfriend’s feelings for her are more heartfelt than hers for him. In "Waiting", the woman at the centre of a scandal from the past is not the only one hoping for an explanation of what happened, while a young woman in distress attracts the attentions of a sinister landlord in "Dispossessed". With original and compelling narratives, Putting the Pieces in Place offers the reader insights into the more hidden, often puzzling, impulses of human nature, with all its uncertainty and intrigue. There are few conventional shocks or horrors on display, but you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are. This book is a disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts. More...
	The Rite of Trebizond and Other Tales - October 2008 Mark Valentine & John Howard Sold Out. Almost five years have passed since we last heard anything from that monarch of dim visions and recondite Mysteries, The Connoisseur. There were whispers of a long planed retreat in the sun stricken Mithraic caves of Cappadocia. Or was it to a mysterious and unnamed Coptic monastery in Alexandria? Others sustained The Connoisseur was captured by a group of Armenian ether drinkers, somewhere in an unknown village in Prussia. Something about a terrible “black ikon” was mentioned. A year ago, the author himself claimed that The Connoisseur was dying. Confronted with such contradictory, ambiguous and indeed - uneasy information, we decided to find out the truth on our own. We are pleased to say we have good news. The Connoisseur is alive and sends his august regards. For proof, we have three new long tales to infirm all rumors. Mark Valentine & John Howard offer here three new excellent episodes from the casebook of the aesthetical occult detective, The Connoisseur, whose adventures have been described as “curious and wonderful” and “shot through with authentically fin-de-siècle gleams of decadence”. Four further stories complete the collection. More...