The Dark Domain

by Stefan Grabiński, Mroslaw Lipinski (Translator)

'...reading The Dark Domain by Stephan Grabinski is such a revelatory experience. Because here is a writer for whom supernatural horror is manifest precisely in modernity - in electricity, fire-stations, uncanny as the bad conscience of today. Sometimes Grabinski is known as the Polish Poe but this is misleading. Where Poe's horror is agonised, a kind of extended shriek, Grabinski's is cerebral, investigative. His protagonists are tortured and aghast, but not because they suffer at the caprice of Lovecraftian blind idiot Grabinski's universe is strange and its principles are perhaps not what we expect, but they are principles - rules- and it is in their exploration that the mystery lies. This is horror as rigour.'
China Mieville in The Guardian

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Gothic, Polish Literature

153 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1918

About the author

Stefan Grabiński (February 26, 1887 - November 12, 1936) was a Polish writer of horror fiction, sometimes called "the Polish Poe".

Grabiński worked as teacher in Lwów and Przemyśl and is famous for his train stories collected in Demon ruchu (The Motion Demon). A number of stories were translated by Miroslaw Lipinski into English and published as The Dark Domain. In addition, some of his work has been adapted to film, such as Szamota's Mistress.

Grabiński died of tuberculosis in 1936.