A Postmortem Dream

by Ladislav Klíma, Jed Slast (Translator), Pavel Růt (Illustrator)

One of Ladislav Klíma's most famous ghost stories, A Postmortem Dream is an unfinished novella about Matthias Lebermayer, a corpulent provincial shopkeeper who is either dead or dreaming (while passed out drunk), or maybe both, simultaneously experiencing past and future lives as himself and as someone else. As he tries to work out where the borders of reality lie, if he's dreaming, awake, or indeed dead, he is continually haunted by a mysterious man in a shabby checkered suit who utters the strange words: "Five fields I have passed," triggering overwhelming dread as well as dislocations in time and space. Lebermayer has no idea what the words could mean, but more clues are revealed as his life bleeds into another. With echoes of Poe and Plato's Myth of Er, Klíma tells his tale of horror with great brio and humor.

Genres: Fiction, Horror

70 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1920

About the author

Ladislav Klíma (August 8, 1878 – April 19, 1928), was a Czech philosopher and novelist influenced by George Berkeley, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. His philosophy is referred to varyingly as existentialism and subjective idealism.

Reviews

[rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

starting to notice a huge motif of ghosts in czech literature…it’s like how prague feels very much like a haunted city. it has almost all its original buildings, sometimes it seems like you can hear the voices of storytellers and artists being whispered from the walls…in constant chatter and disagreement.

[Edward Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this gem in the Oxfam bookshop where I volunteer. A lovely edition, a small red hardback with some inserts of abstract design/art to accompany this other-worldly tale where (as the title states) the narrator drifts and lurches between drunken dream, post-death hallucination, and ghostly apparition. I don’t read much of “this sort of thing” so probably lack some critical perspective or reference points, but I found this short story intriguing and gripping.

[Yasmin Fahoum · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing very accurately represents what being in a dream feels like. I would’ve liked it better if it was a bit longer since it’s categorized as a novel. Overall, I enjoyed reading it, it’s very complex in its ideas and the writing convincingly highlights that.