LOST CARTOGRAPHIES - Cyril Simsa

The adventurous Invocations Press of Brighton have announced a new publication, Lost Cartographies: Tales of Another Europe, a collection of curious fiction by Wormwood contributor Cyril Simsa of Prague. "Europe has always been Other, and there have always been other Europes" they remind us, and offer "Six stories, six Europes. All of them teetering on the very edge of the map."

In his introduction, the author explores how the idea of the Other has haunted the European imagination, sometimes located in terrain close by, just across a boundary, sometimes far away, in realms regarded as exotic and truly outland. He tells us: "These are my reports from the far side of our culture's ambivalent European identity. From the weird germ-lines and the mapless demesnes on the left-hand side of the family."

The stories are in the Central European fantastic tradition of Gustav Meyrink and Leo Perutz, where travellers encounter places stranger than the coasts of Bohemia, and ancient spirits adapt themselves to modern shapes.