“Horror Needs No Passport: 20th Century Horror Fiction Outside the US and UK” by Jess Nevins

"Horror Needs No Passport: 20th Century Horror Fiction Outside the US and UK" by Jess Nevins

"The first book to cover global horror fiction during the twentieth century, the decades in which the horror genre matured and came of age, HORROR NEEDS NO PASSPORT covers hundreds of authors and stories and novels from 72 countries. The great majority of these works have never been translated into English and are mentioned only slightly, if at all, in the standard horror genre reference books. Yet these stories and novels contain a wealth of high quality horror, whether written by Angolan authors or Uruguayan authors. It's a shame that nearly all of these horror stories and novels are unknown to readers in the United States and the United Kingdom, as they would enjoy these works greatly if they could read them.

The book does not contain an over-arching narrative; the horror literatures of the world are far too varied for any one narrative to fit. Instead, each author gets their own one or two paragraph entry, placing them in the context of their time and place and describing what their horror fiction is about, why their horror fiction matters, and whether or not their horror fiction is worth reading.

Other reference books about horror fiction cover a scant handful of the authors and works described and analyzed in HORROR NEEDS NO PASSPORT and rarely venture outside Western Europe, Japan, and parts of Latin America. HORROR NEEDS NO PASSPORT covers multiple countries from every continent, going back to at least the turn of the twentieth century and in some cases well into the nineteenth century.

Written for both casual readers and interested academics, HORROR NEEDS NO PASSPORT is unlike anything else on the market."