Inner Europe

by John Howard, Mark Valentine

In an East Prussian manor house, a Bohemian library, a Bulgarian railway station; in a Venetian citadel, a Breton harbour, a city in the Caucasus, char­acters encounter not only the vicis­situdes of history but also the sub­tle influences of the uncanny.

As they face war, revolution and up­heaval, or the quieter encroachments of decay, these haunted figures must find their way both in a changed world and in mysterious overlapping other­worlds.  

Inner Europe collects thirteen stories, eleven of them newly written for this book. This shared volume follows the two authors’ well-received Secret Europe and takes the reader once again on strange journeys to forgotten or little-known places and peculiar historical byways.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Literature

242 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2018

About the author

John Howard was born in London. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and the collections The Silver Voices (2010), Written by Daylight (2013), and Cities and Thrones and Powers (2013). The majority of his stories have central and eastern European settings; many are set in the fictional Romanian town of Steaua de Munte. The Defeat of Grief (2010) is a novella set in Steaua de Munte and the real Black Sea resort of Balcic; Numbered as Sand or the Stars (2012) attempts a 'secret history' of Hungary between the World Wars.

Between 2003 and 2007 John Howard collaborated on eight short stories with Mark Valentine, six of which featured Valentine’s long-running series character The Connoisseur, an occult detective whose real name is never revealed. All 23 tales of The Connoisseur, including the collaborations, were reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur (2010).

Secret Europe (2012) is a collection jointly written with Mark Valentine comprising 25 short stories set in a variety of real and fictional European locations. Ten of the stories are by Howard and fifteen by Valentine.

John Howard has written articles for numerous magazines including Book and Magazine Collector, Supernatural Tales, Wormwood, Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, and All Hallows. He contributed essays to the Fritz Leiber special issue of Fantasy Commentator (No. 57/58, 2004) and to the books Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner (2007), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008), and The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch (2009), all edited by Benjamin Szumskyj.

John Howard also wrote the introduction to the Ash-Tree Press edition of Francis Brett Young’s classic 1924 horror novel Cold Harbour (2007).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Inner Europe - Thirteen stories collected here, thirteen master strokes of the imagination complements of British authors John Howard and Mark Valentine.

We journey from Cornwall to the Dalmatian coast, from Iceland to lands bordering the Black Sea and many points between and beyond. John Howard's six stories and Mark Valentine's seven stories exemplify the book's dedication: To Europe: the beguiling, the enduring.

Oh, how John and Mark peel back the continent's outer skin so as to bend and morph European history in ways most uncanny. To share a taste of the authors' literary torquing, I'll focus on the following Inner Europe quartet:

THE ROSES OF RAVENNA by Mark Valentine
“The roses of Ravenna are fed by decay." The roses are “like little warning lamps, saying do not trespass upon this treacherous land, this salt terrain that still sends out its tongue towards the unreturning sea.” Taken from the story's first paragraph, words that foreshadow impending rot and degeneration since Ravenna roses serve not only as warning lamps but also irresistible lures for those unfortunates snared by their richly red spell.

The narrator reflects on the present state of the city and its environs where there are no more Byzantine vessels, gilded barges, gonfalons of merchant fleets. “Nor are the few human forms spared the desuetude that permeates this place.” But, yet, he remains a seeker of a true sovereignty, sanctity and beauty, most especially since he desires “to efface the memory of that image I saw which was – shall we say, the reverse of all those?" One may ask: exactly what image did the narrator see that he wishes to efface? Ah, one of Europe's ancient, mysterious, inner dimensions is disclosed but not until the tale's concluding paragraphs.

Chalk and paper in hand, it has been the narrator's practice to sketch the inhabitants of Ravenna, an artist forever on the lookout for facial signs bearing “the impress of the imperial, the mark of the most holy.” By a chance happening, he meets and then forms a keen friendship with an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood, a youth by the name of Casimir. "His hair was dusty gold, dishevelled always, his nose delicately flared like the opening of iris flowers, and his eyes - and this is always a sure sign - were that pale violet which is a last ray of the light of the imperial purple."

As he eventually learns, Casimir is a devotee of the god Nero and also third century boy-emperor Elagabalus, considered by many at the time to be the reincarnation of Nero. Elagabalus became known as Heliogabalus, as in The Roses of Heliogabalus, an 1888 painting depicting a royal banquet where the boy-emperor released a mountain of rose petals from a false ceiling, smothering unsuspecting guests.

In a barber shop (one of a number of echoes from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice), our narrator also makes the acquaintance of an older, pasty skin Englishman with lucent blue eyes, one Lastingham, who turns out to be quite knowledgeable regarding ancient religions and cults. The narrator tells Lastingham about Casimir and his interests which leads to a dinner at Lastingham’s estate where the Englishman recounts for both Casimir and the narrator legends revolving around Heliogabalus, legends including the boy-emperor’s worship and identification with Syrian god Baal.

Weeks thereafter, the narrator begins hearing stories about Lastingham and Casimir having set forth on expeditions both east and west beyond Ravenna in quest of traces of an altar dedicated to Nero and/or the Syrian boy-emperor Elagabalus. What follows is a strange sequence of events bathed in the deep vermillion of Ravenna roses.

HERE IS MY COUNTRY by John Howard
“But no-one seems to remember the episode of the Graupen Library in Triberec. Nobody seems to be aware of it now, unless it is to recall what seems to be no more than a particularly odd dream. There is no-one except me-and one other.”

We're in Czechoslovakia in 1948, tumultuous times of shifting political power. The narrator informs us the Graupen Library is "a masterpiece of light and clarity,” the outer surface constructed of “sleek white concrete and lake-clear glass,” giving one the sense of spaciousness, a building designed by none other than the great Miles (Mies van der Rohe) famous for his International Style, a library funded by the family fortune of Franz Graupen, a man the town’s leading journalist, Marek Blažek, always referred to as the “Ultimate Connoisseur.” However, when some local hack politician’s plans insert themselves into the aforementioned shifting political power, miraculously, the Graupen Library has filled up with water.

A tale of the fabulous where the hard, brutal outer shell of European history can be so impenetrable, the Inner Europe of imagination and endless possibilities is sealed off, reduced to a strange dream, even if that dream is a collective dream documented by the contents of a library.

John Howard's tale bringing to mind multiple associations, among their number, Ray Bradbury's words: “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Yet, as we are in a Czechoslovakia invaded first by the Nazis then by the Soviets, for the narrator and Marek Blažek, beyond books and learning, there are deeper, more personal reasons to pound fist against heart and touch one's forehead before singing the Czech national anthem, "Czech land, home of mind, Czech land, home of mine."

THE FENCING MASK by Mark Valentine
Three teenage army deserters journey across the European countryside during a time of war. One evening, on the cusp of starvation, cautiously, very cautiously, the trio venture into an abandoned house. After gorging themselves on apples, they make their way along a passage to one of the last rooms where all is empty save for a chandelier holder on the ceiling in the form of a plaster satyr surrounded by carved grapes and two fencing masks hanging from a frayed golden cord. The narrator reckons the three of them are the first to have entered this room in years.

Thoroughly exhausted, they decide to sleep the night on the floor. With the first faint light of dawn, the narrator realizes one of the fencing masks is gone. In the far corner, he spots a figure that ought to have been Franz. “It wore his long black coat, like an old dandyish cloak. It had his worn boots. They were his pale hands fluttering about his head. But where his face should be there was only an oval of white and a black mesh.” He calls out but the mask does not reply; rather, the figure rises to its feet. “The right arm stretched out rigidly then flashed in a sequence of quick flourishes. The cloaked figure swirled, swerved, stepped aside, stood back, lunged.”

The narrator rouses Nico to watch the masked apparition fencing. All might seem like good sport and fun until “I seemed to hear a whistling in the air as though there were indeed a fine blade in my friend’s hand.” Is this a ghost story, a tale of psychic possession or one where the frenzied spirit of the pagan god Dionysus rears its satyr head to confront the three young deserters? A Valentine jewel rendered in the author's signature suavity.

SUN VOYAGER by John Howard
"Mr Lewis Bell came to Reykjavik because of the sculptures. So he told me at first, but that was only partly true. There was another reason." So begins this John Howard tale of desperation where Lewis Bell, an Englishman, travels to Iceland since he lost his life savings, his wife, everything. But as we read the final words of this compelling tale, we come to appreciate the magic of an Inner Europe offering transformation, both aesthetic and spiritual. True, it might take total desperation but the power of a work of art like Sun Voyager can provide nothing short of salvation.


Sun Voyager, created by Icelandic sculptor Jon Gunnar Arnason



John Howard


Mark Valentine

[Karl]

This hardcover is one of three hundred published and it is signed by both John Howard and Mark Valentine.

Contents:

001 - "The Roses of Revenna" by Mark Valentine
016 - "Here is My Country" by John Howard
035 - "Tregarrion's Bequest" by Mark Valentine
050 - "Another Sea" by John Howard (2016)
075 - The Fencing Mask" by Mark Valentine
085 - "The Ligh ofAdria" by John Howard
115 - "The Concession" by Mark Valentine
125 - "Orient Imperial" by John Howard
153 - "The Antinomy to Zero by Mark Valentine
175 - "Sun Voyager" by John Howard
190 - "The Dragons of Medea" by Mark Valentine
202 - "Threshold" by John Howard
228 - "Lost Gonfalon" by Mark Valentine

[Benjamin Uminsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful companion collection to Secret Europe, at least it certainly reads that way. This collection continues a delightful exploration of secret, uncanny, and slightly behind the veil locales in Europe. Both Howard and Valentines stories in this collection are utterly engrossing and really transports the reader.

Highly recommended!

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished! like a 4.5 going up to a 5


so bloody good. truly.

More to come as I get though the backlog.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Benjamin for the recommendation. So far I'm finding this slippery and engaging; the light touch lets the colorful characters and intriguing events speak for themselves. The authors seem to have somewhat similar styles, though maybe that's an impression from the theme of the collection. The prose is generally clean and uncluttered, and the narrators' voices are nicely rendered.

"The Roses of Ravenna" reworks the "aging queens competing for favors of nubile youth" trope; no big surprises, but very charming and well-executed. "Tregarrion's Bequest" reads like a much kinder, gentler retelling of Lovecraft's "The Festival"? "Another Sea" is giving online references a hard time; Lietaunas is clearly Lithuania, Google translates it as "toast" (ha!). I enjoyed the leisurely buildup, the final revelation is a little goofy but oddly satisfying. "The Fencing Mask": straightforward little piece, but I liked the language, the tight execution, and the open ending. "The Light of Adria" rambles too much for my taste, but the ending, interweaving historical events, is relatively restrained and nicely done. I didn't get "The Concession"; some nice images, but beyond that?

The narrative voices of "Sun Voyager" and "The Dragons of Medea" are both skillfully done. The recent historical events of the former could probably have used a more subtle exposition, but I think the voice makes up for it. Not a fan of "Threshold", but "Lost Gonfalon" is a charming, somewhat Aickman-esque ending.

(I wish goodreads allows half stars. I'm not quite ready to give this four, but I'm clearly more enthusiastic than my usual 3-star book.)

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Venice as a psychologically spurned hinterland of a Republic, if such a thing can be imagined, as if it is or was or will be an Inland Empire without borders on the coast. Only my fencing-mask needs taking off for me to tell you with whom you have been sparring story to story inside a book that has no borders or coasts or hinterland. Most of its individual stories, when fenced-off from each other, should never be forgotten as islands of literary craft, nor prevented, for their own discrete sakes, from escaping my attempt at Gestalt. But, then again, maybe they should be brought together again in a book, passed to other reading hands, as a mighty inner strength that they always were. Ever halfway there, ever halfway back.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in 2018